Anthropologie’s Candan Erenguc on what’s next for Maeve and other owned brands

While private label products aren’t new at Anthropologie, they’re proving popular with the company’s core, trend-minded consumer. Last year, Maeve was Anthropologie’s most-searched brand on its website, garnering nearly 3 million searches. Maeve is especially popular with Gen Z and millennials, thanks to its mix of casual and work-ready looks, like $130 wide-leg pants and $68 turtlenecks.

What’s been key to building Anthropologie’s private brands, Erenguc told Modern Retail in an interview, is the company’s in-house design system. It keeps close tabs on trends, then works with its team to translate everything from cats to playing cards to its merchandise.

While Anthropologie does not break out exact sales for private brands, it said its owned brands are posting double-digit growth. Overall, Anthropologie’s net sales were up 5.7% year over year for the three months ending July 31. Anthropologie has now posted “four years of consecutive quarterly positive comps,” URBN CEO Frank Conforti said on an August earnings call.

The brand, like others in apparel and home, has had to navigate macroeconomic headwinds like tariffs and shifting consumer sentiment. Erenguc has helped lead this charge, having joined Anthropologie three years ago after stints at Away and Lululemon. She has a history with the brand; she first visited an Anthropologie store while interning in the late ’90s in Michigan. Later, she got a job with Ford Motor Company and rented an apartment “within walking distance from that Anthropologie,” she told Modern Retail. Now, she’s overseeing Anthropologie’s operations, inventory and finance across North America and Europe.

Erenguc spoke with Modern Retail about Anthropologie’s bigger bet on owned brands, its new Maeve store and its plans for the holidays. The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What do you attribute the growth of your private label brands to?
“We are so vertically-integrated that we’re able to bring product to market very quickly. So, when our customer likes something, we chase it. We’re able to bring it to them where they want and how they want it. … We have tremendous design and development capabilities in-house, and that allows us to be very responsive. If [the customer] preferred other brands — if they preferred market brands — that’s what we would give them. But they prefer our brands. And I think part of that is because of our agility.

[We also have] a multi-generational customer. You will see a grandparent and grandchild or a parent and a child in our stores. They really have a multi-generational feel, and part of that is because we have this cross-category way of taking a trend and making it relevant to however an individual wants to adopt it.”

What factors are you looking at to stay on top of trends and adjust merchandise accordingly?
“We have the best merchants in the business. They don’t just read into what our customers want, but they also know what our customers are going to want. [For example,] if you go into our stores right now, you’re going to see dachshunds everywhere. They are, right now, the most popular dog icon.

Our merchants are so good at knowing what trends are going to resonate with our customers. And because we have this fast-turn capability, if we try something, and it’s an even quicker hit than we thought it was going to be, we can chase more of that into different categories.

Like, bag charms. They exploded a year and a half ago. Our accessories team not only chased that, but they also diversified those. Name a thing you’re into, and there’s a bag charm for that. There are a lot of examples of icons, whether it be a strawberry, a sardine, a dog. Our merchant team will work in an integrated way to go, ‘How can we adopt that into a category? How can we make that relevant to a sweater? How can we put that on a plate, a mug, a lamp, a piece of bedding, a bath mat, a doormat?’

Because we are this lifestyle brand, we’re able to serve trends up in a lot of different contexts. There may be a certain price point that one customer is willing to adopt a trend in. There may be a certain category, too. Like, ‘Maybe I don’t want dogs all over my dress, but I do want a dog lamp.’ [Customers] get to select how they’re going to adopt that trend.”

You talked about customers embracing the Maeve brand. Why have you decided to open standalone Maeve stores? And how will these be different from Anthropologie stores?
“Our first one is coming next month [in October], and we’re so excited. It’s going to be very different from an Anthro store. It’s really a boutique shopping experience. An average Anthro store is maybe 8,000 selling square feet. And the average Maeve store is only 2,500 selling square feet.

Anthro is a multi-brand retail environment, and Maeve is a Maeve retail environment. There will be other brands, but it’s the Maeve aesthetic that dictates the design of the store. … It will still be cross-category, but it will be more heavily penetrated by apparel. There will be a lot of the Maeve brand, but also market brands specific to the Maeve experience. So, for example, we’re really excited to have Jennifer Fisher jewelry. There will be a slightly elevated assortment. We’re still going to have Maeve product in Anthro stores, but there will also be exclusive product that will only be in Maeve stores.

We know those markets where Maeve over-indexes, and we know those markets where our customer wants more Maeve. So those are the markets that we’re looking at for stores. And, because of the smaller footprint, it also allows us to establish a Maeve presence in environments where we can’t find 10,000 square feet.”

What are your plans for the holidays?
“There’s a lot of energy. The holidays are starting earlier and earlier. If you saw how much Halloween stuff we were selling in June, I mean. [Laughs] We’re seeing the same thing with holiday. Things are definitely coming earlier, and we’re offering product earlier. Our advent calendar went live right after Labor Day. And our holiday windows are a big deal for us. It’s a big reveal every year, so I can’t spoil that, but they’re going to be revealed in October.

We now have Anu Narayanan as the president of women’s and home, and that’s been the case for about a year. That, in my mind, has been a critical unlock that’s enabled us for the first time to very fluidly create these lifestyle, cross-category, integrated product stories. We’re able to take these icons and trends and make them come alive in the home category just as much as we do in apparel or beauty. So, you’ll see more of that in holiday. And we’ll definitely be participating in Black Friday, along with the rest of the retail community.”