When Kate Lindello took her 8-year-old daughter Helen to get her ears pierced, going to Claire’s was a no-brainer.
“It was a rite of passage,” said Lindello, who got her own ears pierced at Claire’s 32 years ago.
But it turned out to be an awkward experience — the teenage piercer was also the only sales associate in the store. A hole became infected, and later needed to be re-pierced. This time around, Lindello took her daughter to a tattoo parlor, which offered custom gauges, hypoallergenic earrings with flat backs and a better cleaning solution.
That was in 2020. A few months ago, Lindello took Helen, now 13, for her second set of ear piercings. They happened to be in the Mall of America, and came across Rowan, an upstart piercing chain with nearly 100 locations.
“They make it so fun,” Helen said. “You get these cute hair clips when they’re piercing your ears and the whole place is decorated for teenage girls.”
Rowan, founded in 2017 by Wall Street veteran Louisa Schneider, has become the face of disruption when it comes to ear piercings, a category dominated for decades by the ubiquitous Claire’s and other mostly mall-based stores. As the big chains have fallen victim to declining foot traffic and the flood of cheap accessories available on Amazon and Shein, a web of startups and independent studios have stepped in. That process is accelerating; Claire’s filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August, and is down to about 1,000 locations, less than a third of its peak.
Claire’s declined to be interviewed for this story.
Most of these upstarts pay homage to the rite of passage aspect of ear piercing, but claim to offer something more. Rowan, for example, operates in many of the same malls as Claire’s – and sometimes out of the very same square footage abandoned by its larger rival. But rather than using the spring-loaded gun long favoured by mall piercing chains, it offers needle piercings as well as piercings by a hand-pressurised device. All piercings are performed by licensed nurses.
Whether piercings need this level of care is up to the piercee (or their parents). But culturally, Rowan’s approach is making inroads.
“There’s this place in Westport the entire Fairfield County goes to,” said Mordechai Rubinstein, a Connecticut dad and fashion consultant.
It’s not just Rowan winning a slice of the pie. The ear piercing market has blown wide open, thanks to the rising awareness of health and hygiene standards in piercing, as well as the enduring trend of “ear-scaping” — the curated stacks of hoops and studs that have become a millennial and Gen Z style staple. What used to be a one-and-done rite of passage has turned into a hobby. The average customer at Studs, a chain of about 40 studios that also sell jewellery, is 27 and has five to nine piercings, said chief executive and co-founder Anna Harman. One of its new locations, in Las Vegas, is designed specifically for bachelorette and birthday parties.
Big, mainstream retailers have joined the race to fill Claire’s gap in the market too. Ulta Beauty, for instance, began offering ear piercing services at its roughly 1,5000 stores starting in 2021. That same year, Piercing Pagoda, Signet Jeweler’s chain of mall piercing kiosks, announced a rebrand to Banter at over 500 locations, which now include some full-line stores. Some CVS locations offer ear piercing services today, as does the retailer Five Below.
Rowan’s Schneider still sees plenty of white space. It’s opening about 30 to 40 new stores a year.
“We’ve identified 750 locations in the US that would be ideal,” said Schneider.
The Independent Studios
Far before the venture-backed startups and nationwide retailers, it was the local parlors that laid the groundwork for the industry’s reinvention.
For instance, until the early 2000s, the standard after-care product from mall piercing spots was a harsh solution that contains alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. It killed harmful bacteria, but also delayed the healing process and damaged sensitive new tissue.
Independent piercers, who often operated out of tattoo shops, have been using a gentler saline solution since the 1970s, according to Pablo Perelmuter, vice president of the Association of Professional Piercers, a nonprofit organisation that promotes health and safety standards in the industry.
The organisation was founded in 1994 and saw a dramatic influx of members in the 2010s, as awareness mounted around safe piercing and the industry began to separate from tattooing.
“The influence of social media was big, people sharing their bad experiences online,” said Perelmuter, pointing to common injuries such as wounds swelling over earring posts. “This communal sharing of stories has helped our community grow.”
Today, the APP boasts more than 1,000 members, mostly independent piercing studios. Neither Rowan nor Studs are affiliated with the group. Despite their common interest in higher standards of care in piercing, there is yet to be industry consensus around best practices. While APP believes needle piercing is the most ideal method, Rowan’s medical research suggests that a hand-pressurised device can be just as effective and safe. Rowan is the only major player that offers service exclusively from licensed medical professionals, while the APP and Studs require apprenticeship and training, respectively.
But regardless of their differences, the industry as a whole has moved toward a safer, more professional level of care.
Even Claire’s has done away with piercing guns.
Under its new owner, private equity firm Ames Watson, Claire’s piercings are conducted by what it calls a certified piercing specialist — an employee who has completed a training programme — using a hand-pressured instrument, the company said in an email statement.
