Claire’s, the tween accessory chain, is once again in turnaround mode. The brand is trying to break through the boredom barrier for its core audience of pre-teen girls. The Wall Street Journal recently ran a highly positive piece on Claire’s new CMO and her sharply defined strategy for understanding and solving the needs of tweens around the world. This is exactly the right direction. In any turnaround, a critical priority is to refocus on the brand’s core. This article appears in Branding Strategy Insider’s FREE newsletter. Join the world’s most insightful marketers and subscribe here for actionable ideas delivered straight to your inbox. Claire’s urgently needs renewed brand affection from its primary customers. Over the past decade, Claire’s has entered and exited Chapter 11 twice. The first bankruptcy was in 2018, and the latest occurred just last year, in 2025. Yet between these two filings, Claire’s Holdings LLC earned a spot on Fast Company’s (the monthly business magazine) prestigious annual list of the World’s Most Innovative Companies for 2023. Claire’s ranked second in the retail category. Fast Company praised Claire’s inventive brand-business strategy, which helped transform the company into a vibrant, global, and playful fashion brand. The magazine also highlighted Claire’s talent for engaging customers through surprise-and-delight, its on-trend product mix, the consistency of its end-to-end brand-business experience, and its attentive customer service. In the post-COVID period, while many retailers were overwhelmed with excess inventory and scrambling to stay afloat, Claire’s followed a bold, innovation-led growth path. At the heart of Claire’s strategy was an exceptionally sharp understanding…