When The Webster opened as a Miami pop-up in 2008 – followed by its first South Beach storefront in 2009 – headlines in the wake of the financial crisis declared that retail was dead, founder and CEO Laure Heriard Dubreuil recalls.
Today’s media storm paints a similar picture, as multi-brand retailers drop like flies and tariffs have the entire industry navigating skyrocketing prices and raging levels of uncertainty. But Dubreuil is calm, resolved to be “smart, proactive and prudent”, she says. Now with 13 stores throughout the US and Canada – the most recent openings this year in Las Vegas and Austin, with Dallas on the way – The Webster has hit its stride. Can its strategy weather another storm?
“Now we’re big enough – but at the same time we’re small enough – to be flexible,” Dubreuil says. “We have this entrepreneurial grind. That’s the way we [operate] with opening new stores, but also running the existing stores. It’s constantly evolving, rethinking, adapting, being proactive. We’ve seen that shown to be really, really successful during lockdown and post-Covid.”
In the five years since the pandemic began, The Webster has opened eight new stores. This means more than half of the retailer’s stores have opened in the last third of its existence. It’s a steep incline, but Dubreuil is confident that this footprint is what The Webster needs to stay the course.
Walking into a Webster boutique doesn’t feel like you’re walking into a department store. The spaces are intimate; the architecture more of a statement. The clothes aren’t split by brand, but by aesthetics and context, grouped into outfits that a client could feasibly wear together. Or at least take inspiration from.
In multi-brand retail today, good customer service, neat spaces and careful curation are harder than ever to find. There’s a reason everyone’s still talking about Barneys. When these things come together, steered by a unique point of view, they take off. Take New York’s new Printemps outpost, where shop-in-shops and price-dictated sections are foregone in favour of Printemps’s own merchandising choices. “It’s based on our point of view,” Silvano Vangi, Printemps creative and merchandising director, told Vogue Business. The Webster shares a similar ethos. “The beauty is to mix all of the brands together so clients can have a personalised experience and a unique look at the brands,” Dubreuil says.
Now, the goal is to maintain this magic while continuing to grow – not just its store footprint, but its shopper. In the early days, Dubreuil relied on her gut instinct when choosing new locations. Now, as The Webster expands inland beyond the coastal cities, she still relies on that instinct, but with data and analysis to boot. Atlanta and Austin (two recent openings), for instance, have been in The Webster’s top five e-commerce cities for years, Dubreuil says. But you can’t be everywhere. How does The Webster strike the right balance between niche and mass? And can it continue to do so?
The sweet spot
What customers want today is a good and unique shopping experience. It’s increasingly hard to find, as multi-brand retailers buckle. Standalone specialty stores are bright spots, offering discovery and personalisation lacking in the more widespread offerings.
But, in Dubreuil’s view, The Webster is much better positioned now than when it had just one or two locations. “If the market is hit, we’ve been able to pivot and adapt and then again provide to our clients wherever they were traveling or spending time,” she says.
It’s also handy inventory management. “It helps to be bigger because we are more resourceful,” she says. “If a location is specifically hit by something, we can pivot to another location and move the inventory around. I also move stylists around.”
The Webster’s wider physical presence also means it has established name recognition. It’s a recent evolution, Dubreuil says. When the Atlanta store opened in October 2024, all of the stylists the CEO interviewed were already familiar with The Webster. “They all had been in one or several of our locations. We had the sign up, but it was still with the scaffolding, and clients were trying to get inside,” she says. “This is different because when we first opened in shopping centers and environments, we had to educate. [This was] the first time that they were already familiar.”
Client-first
Those that are familiar become very familiar. The Webster places strong emphasis on its relationship with clients. It dictates where the retailer shows up next. “Wherever they are, we follow them,” Dubreuil says, referencing the recent Atlanta and Austin openings.
The Webster stylists at the store – and online – have strong ties to the retailer’s clients. They check in; pick out clothes; keep them up to date on events and happenings. Dubreuil goes back to Covid times: “From the first day of lockdown, it’s the end of the world, everything was shut down. We are in contact with our clients just even to see, ‘how are you doing?’” This personalised approach, she says, is at the crux of The Webster’s strong consumer loyalty. “We are continuously building and developing this for every new location, following our clients.”
It’s reminiscent of Mytheresa’s laser-focus on its top clients. Albeit at a lesser scale (The Webster is, after all, still an independent retailer – even with 13 stores), the customer-first approach echoes the online retailer’s own: both credit their success, in part, to the relationships the stores and their employees have with those spending big.
The Webster’s tight edit, with a focus on discovery, is also in service of how Dubreuil has come to learn its customers want to shop. They’re fashionable and have their own style, but they’re also keen to try, discover, listen to and share with The Webster stylists, she says. “There’s so much noise that clients are lost or even more bored,” she says. “They like to have fun at The Webster.”
Locals only
Once in a city, The Webster hones in on locality, from the store and inventory aesthetics to the client relationships the in-store stylists build. “Each location is different. Each curation and aesthetic is different. But you have the common thread; the DNA,” Dubreuil says.
Miami, for instance, is Art Deco: terrazzo floors; the pink facade; the pink flamingo courtesy of editor and illustrator Michal Roberts. Other aspects of the store – the tropical orange blossom scent created in collaboration with Élisabeth de Feydeau; the use of vintage wallpaper – carry through each location. Each looks and feels different. But each looks and feels like The Webster.
This logic follows through The Webster’s buy. “We pull from the same brands, but not all of the brands are represented in all of our locations,” Dubreuil says.
The buy is informed by the weather; the culture of dress (laid back? To the nines?); the cultural happenings of a given location – but never straying too far from The Webster DNA. “At the beginning, brands would tell me, oh, this is so Miami or this is so Miami. And when I tried things that were ‘so Miami’, it never worked,” the founder says.
The product mix is dictated by how a customer goes about their day in a given city, too. Austin, for instance, is a mix of Los Angeles and Miami, Dubreuil says. “LA is casual during the day and [for] big events you dress up – but you don’t have as many. Whereas in Texas, for any dinner you dress up. And Miami, you’re dressed up day and night,” she laughs.
The latest major influence on the product curation is local events, Dubreuil says. The Webster will increasingly host pop-ups and release location-specific collaborations tied to whatever is going on in the area. Art Basel in Miami. Frieze Art Fair in New York and Los Angeles. Formula One not just in Miami, but also in Vegas and Austin. Indian Wells tennis tournament and Coachella (which just wrapped) in Palm Springs. “Between entertainment, music, art and architecture, it keeps us plugged in,” Dubreuil says.
The Webster Palm Springs hosted an event in March during Indian Wells. In Miami in May, the retailer will release a capsule collection with Roberto Cavalli during the F1.
Will The Webster crop up in more corners of the US, to collide with the country’s increasingly-packed events schedule, anytime soon? There’s no plan right now, Dubreuil says, but she’s always open to opportunities (once the tariff situation calms down). “I would love to continue to grow. But it has to make sense for our clients, for the market and for our business.”
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