WeWork Steps Into Retail With J.Crew

In WeWork’s first fashion partnership, J.Crew will host a panel discussion series and sell items from its spring collection at several of the co-working company’s locations across the U.S. The talks — and the retail offerings — will come to WeWork spaces in New York, San Francisco, Atlanta and Philadelphia, Glossy reported.

As part of the program, the WeWork locations will house pop-up shops that will sell items from J.Crew’s spring collection and offer discounts to WeWork members. A portion of the sales from the shops will go to local charities, while the actual talks will be centered around professional success and personal fulfillment.

The events and shops allow J.Crew to gain visibility and add to its strategy of featuring non-models for its marketing. On its blog, for example, J.Crew created content that features WeWork members modeling clothes from the retailer’s spring collection, along with their career advice.

Jennifer Skyler, chief communications officer for WeWork, said the partnership comes as WeWork and J.Crew share values of diversity, authenticity and empowerment.

“These events will bring together inspiring professionals and unique voices to talk about what success and the power of community means to them,” Skyler told Glossy. “This is our first collaboration where we have partnered with a fashion company in this way to celebrate our members. Each of our global locations also hosts a variety of events every week surrounding different topics for our community.”

The partnership comes as a decline in physical retail has hit J.Crew particularly hard in recent years. A mall brand serving what seems to be an increasingly small customer base of extremely preppy shoppers,  J. Crew has struggled with the retail reset that is sweeping the segment.

But J.Crew is also embracing a little outside-of-the-box thinking these days, as it struggles to find a foothold in a new retail landscape. Consumers, a J.Crew spokesperson told us in a recent conversation, aren’t looking for just products to buy, but a reason to get excited about buying.