Buying a $200m Franchisor (Not Units, the Whole System)

And that's, in fact, what you'll hear even if. So I go to and Tyler and I go to, I would say collectively, a bunch of grand openings over the course of a year. And it's almost as if our marketing team has planted people in the store.

uh where i'll just as i'm browsing the aisles hear people saying is this the actual price like how is this even possible is this stuff new is this a thrift store what is this wait i can actually i can sell my clothes to this store as well because that's another important point of differentiation we do very little consignment we're paying cash for clothes that people can come in and sell to us…

And what does it look like? Are these anchors in a strip mall? Are they standalone?

What's the square footage generally? Give us a visual.

You're almost always going to be in a shopping center or a strip mall. And I would say our bread and butter is probably like B minus C plus centers. which actually is an advantage from a real estate perspective because you don't need to go pay, you know, 60 bucks a square foot to be in the A plus center in the center of town.

In fact, what we found is once people understand our model and that's the first barrier, just because when we open up a new market, people are like, what is this? I've never seen this before. Once you get over that hurdle, people are very willing to drive an extra five minutes, maybe down the street from a TJ Maxx, something like this in that B minus center that's down the road.

They're very willing to travel. to get the benefits that we provide. Again, both on the selling side, so we offer cash for clothes on the spot, and then on the buying side as well, where the consumer can go and find stuff that they really want to buy for prices that are, call it 70% off original retail.

Square footage is typically 4,500 square feet, although I'd say we definitely have some smaller stores all the way down to 2,500 square feet. We also have some larger stores that could be 10,000 square feet. But I would say our center of gravity is right in that 4,500 square foot footprint.

Yeah, and I would say that what's the overarching goal is to make each one of our stores, whether it's an uptown or a kid to kid, a destination. And not just a destination in terms of, again, that treasure hunt and the individuality that you can access, but also just from a environmental standpoint. And so if you think back to when we were growing up, where would be the cool place to go hang out…

You go to the mall. Yeah. And so that's where people would be to socialize and develop a sense of community. That obviously is not the case now in most parts or large parts of the U.S. And so we would hope whether for an uptown for teens and young adults or a kid to kid for the young moms to really be the place that you go and you build community.

And so that is the experience, this vibrancy, this community support orientation that hopefully exudes from the second you step foot into one of the stores.