After working 20-plus years in investment banking sales and trading with a focus on retail companies, Louisa Schneider was inspired by her daughter to create the brand Rowan in 2018. Schneider realized that the ear-piercing category was focused primarily on fashion and convenience rather than the piercing procedure and healing process.  Since then, the company has focused on a procedure-first approach, with nurses performing its piercings. It leveraged insights from its nurses and medical board to create single-use hand-pressurized devices for piercing that are more sanitary and precise than traditional piercing techniques. Rowan is the only piercing company that has its own medical board, which includes a plastic surgeon and a pediatrician. Now, Schneider is growing the business while keeping practicality in mind. In January, Rowan launched earrings that can be worn while playing sports. And It launched its first standalone store in 2019 in New York. Creating an inclusive working culture for nurses and making stores a place where customers can celebrate special moments have remained priorities. Rowan has raised more than $30 million to date from Kevin Durant's Thirty Five Ventures and Beechwood Capital, and it's now focused on a country-wide mall expansion. It currently has 30 freestanding locations, with six more underway. Rowan expects to double the number of its locations within the next year. Schneider also plans to tackle global expansion over the next three years with hundreds of stores. The company briefly experimented with a “store-within-a-store” model at 300 Target locations in 2021, but it now focuses on its own locations, where it has greater control over the customer experience and culture.  Schneider joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about the brand and its recent openings. In October, Rowan opened its doors in Preston Royal Village Mall in Dallas. It is the fourth ear-piercing brand to move into the Dallas market in the past three years, joining Wildlike, Maria Tash and, most recently, Studs. The Preston Royal store is the brand’s fifth Texas location, following stores in Southlake and Fort Worth.

Century 21 was once known as the go-to New York City destination for bargain hunters looking to find a treasure amid racks of off-price clothes. But the pandemic had a negative impact on the company, which was overstretched with 13 stores, and it was forced to close down in 2020. But according to Larry Mentzer, COO of the newly relaunched Century 21, plans for the store’s big comeback were already being laid out before it even closed. “Once the decision was made, that we needed to permanently close the business, it was probably that same day or the next day that the conversation started about reopening the business and relaunching the brand,” Mentzer said on this week's episode of the Glossy Podcast. “We are fortunate that we have passionate owners that just have a love for New York City, a love for retail and a love for the Century 21 brand, which was not only a New York City institution, but a family institution.” Mentzer and Judy Duzich, vp and general merchandising director of Century 21, joined the Glossy Podcast to talk about the store’s grand reopening in May of this year. Lots of changes were made, according to Duzich, including paring the retail fleet down from 13 stores to just one.