How 1-800-Flowers Is Reinventing and Revitalizing the Things Remembered Brand

Why it matters:

• Things Remembered, a once-iconic brand that sold engravable gifts in malls across America, closed all of its stores and sold off its brand name two years ago.
• 1-800-Flowers.com acquired the brand for approximately $5 million and is leveraging the business to expand the variety of personalized gifts it offers.
• This year, Things Remembered has added over 600 new product items, included an expanded holiday selection, and boosted its jewelry sales by more than 800%.

How do you take a down-on-its luck, iconic brand that in its heyday was a popular fixture in most of the malls in America and reinvent it for the digital age? By beginning with the end goal in mind, Things Remembered General Manager ReShon Anderson told CO—. Her goal, Anderson said, is to steer Things Remembered toward one of the biggest transformations in retail history.

Anderson became general manager of the brand in February 2024 after stints as Chief Marketing Officer at Crate & Barrel, Chief Digital Officer at jewelry retailer Kendra Scott, and other e-commerce and marketing roles.

Things Remembered was founded in 1967 as a subsidiary of the Cole National Corporation (now a wholly owned subsidiary of eyewear giant Luxottica Group), which primarily owned eyeglass retailers such as the former Sears Optical stores, which shuttered in 2020.

Anatomy of a Things Remembered comeback: From a mall staple to bankruptcy to a go-to platform for personalized gifts

Things Remembered, which at one point had more than 800 stores around the country, was known in the 1970s and 1980s as the place at the mall where you could get a glass vase, a silver picture frame, or a Christmas ornament engraved while you waited.

Its parent company went through a number of reorganizations and restructurings in the 1990s and 2000s and Things Remembered was spun off as a private company. It filed for bankruptcy in 2019 and was acquired by giftware company Enesco soon after. The remaining Things Remembered stores were all closed in December 2022, and the brand was sold to 1-800-Flowers.com.

The acquisition, 1-800-Flowers.com executives said at the time, fit well with its strategy of becoming the go-to place for all gifting occasions.

The publicly traded 1-800-Flowers.com also owns Harry & David, Cheryl's Cookies, Shari's Berries, The Popcorn Factory, Wolferman's Bakery, and other gift brands, including PersonalizationMall.com, which specializes in personalized gifts.

The acquisition allows 1-800-Flowers.com to capitalize on the personalization-at-scale capabilities it has with PersonalizationMall while selling the higher-end milestone and bespoke gifts Things Remembered specializes in.

1-800 executives noted in an earnings call with investors one year after the acquisition that the average order value of Things Remembered sales was 175 basis points higher than the average order value for PersonalizationMall transactions.

[Read: How 1-800-Flowers Changed Its Corporate Gifting Strategy to Monetize the Remote Workforce Trend]

Strategies to grow the brand: Tapping both longtime 'strongholds' and 'green shoots' of opportunity

After being named to head the brand, Anderson held a daylong, off-site brainstorming session with the Things Remembered team to identify key strategies to grow the brand.

From that session came a plan to expand the brand's product offerings by "leaning into categories where we knew we had a stronghold," and by moving into "areas where we thought we would see the most growth based on the green shoots we were seeing in the business," Anderson said.

Things Remembered expanded its assortment in jewelry, which has always been a top category for the brand and has seen over 800% growth.

The company also added new products for babies and kids and expanded the wedding category. Overall, Things Remembered has added over 600 new SKUs (stock-keeping units) this year.

[Read: 3 Businesses Get Creative to Counter Mounting Customer Acquisition Obstacles—And Win]

Courting Gen Z with a social media star and bespoke pet goods

In November, Things Remembered announced it had joined with Kittenish, the lifestyle brand founded by country music star and TV and social media personality Jessie James Decker, to offer over 100 personalized Kittenish products ranging from robes and blankets to ornaments and Christmas stockings.

The collaboration with Decker, Anderson said, ties in the brand's efforts to spread awareness of Things Remembered to Gen Z consumers and others too young to remember its heyday as a mall presence.

Going forward, Anderson sees real opportunity to expand in the pet category, with items like personalized designer collars and leashes.

Since the acquisition, Things Remembered has rebuilt its entire digital platform, and "we're introducing new capability and functionality all the time," Anderson said.

In addition to adding more premium brands to the Things Remembered portfolio, Anderson is focusing on elevating the look of the brand online with more high-end photography and content.

"I think the sky's the limit for this brand," Anderson said. "We have so much potential."

"The hardest thing for me and my job is harnessing what the priorities should be, because there are so many ideas, so much potential, so many directions we can go as a team," she said.

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