Shark Tank's Collars & Co. opens Michigan Avenue store in Chicago

Jack Grieve is the audience engagement reporter for Crain's City Brands. He's a recent graduate of the University of Michigan.

A men's clothing brand that recently inked a deal on ABC's "Shark Tank" is set to open its first brick-and-mortar store in Chicago next week.

Collars & Co., which currently operates entirely online, will open June 9 in The Shops at North Bridge — right outside the Nordstrom store — on the Magnificent Mile. The company has partnered with Leap, a Chicago-based startup that helps e-commerce brands roll out retail stores, to bring the project to life.

Collars & Co. specializes in dress collar polo shirts. The designs take comfortable short-sleeve polo shirts and give them a firm dress collar that can be worn under a sweater or with a suit.

"I hated wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt under a sweater," said Collars & Co. founder Justin Baer. "I just found it very uncomfortable. It's hot, it's scratchy. It's just really annoying when all you care about is the collar."

That's what motivated the Collars & Co. design, which can give the illusion of a classic dress shirt that you wouldn't usually find with short-sleeve shirts. "It doesn't give you that floppy collar look or '70s disco vibe you sometimes see" with typical polos, Baer said.

What started as Baer posting one-off designs to e-commerce platform Shopify has blossomed into millions of dollars in sales thanks in part to a "Shark Tank" deal with Mark Cuban and guest shark Peter Jones.

Baer appeared on the ABC show last November and walked away with a $300,000 investment and $700,000 line of credit in exchange for 10% equity.

Since the deal, Collars & Co. has seen online sales skyrocket to the tune of 400% and net more than $8.5 million. The company has also rolled out a sleek new website and upgraded to a 20,000-square-foot warehouse in Maryland.

Opening a retail store was the natural next step for the company.

"Having a physical store is going to enable us to acquire customers, a lot of offline customers that don't shop as much online on Facebook or on Instagram," Baer said. He hopes the new store will alleviate some of the challenges that digitally native clothing brands like Collars & Co. face, such as customers not knowing their size and being unable to feel the fabrics before purchase.

Although the store will be relatively small — just over 1,000 square feet — any retail lease on the Mag Mile these days is noteworthy.

The COVID pandemic and civil unrest of 2020 knocked the strip down hard, and the shopping district is still struggling to get back on its feet three years later. Multiple retailers, including Gap, Uniqlo and Banana Republic, have left, and not enough new tenants have moved in to take their place. By last count, the retail vacancy rate on North Michigan Avenue was nearly 29%.

But North Michigan Avenue has also taken some steps forward recently. Alo Yoga announced plans in February to open a store in the four-story building at 717 N. Michigan Ave. Before that, Swiss crystal and jewelry maker Swarovski leased space for a small boutique on the Mag Mile, and Aritzia signed a deal for the former Gap building.

Those dynamics were "definitely something we thought about," Baer said, but ultimately they decided the Mag Mile location was the right spot for their first store. "We looked at the metrics of the mall and some of the sales numbers in the area, and they seem to be climbing back, so I think we felt comfortable opening there."

Crain's Alby Gallun contributed reporting.

Jack Grieve is the audience engagement reporter for Crain's City Brands. He's a recent graduate of the University of Michigan.

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