The brands that taught America how to shop are doing it again

Picture the 1998 mall experience. The ritual was universal—wandering tile floors under fluorescent lights, trying on clothes in beige fitting rooms, collecting shopping bags like trophies. 

Shop from those same mall brands today, and the experience will feel both familiar and foreign. The emotional highs are intact, but now AI-powered profiles remember your size across brands. QR codes on tags unlock styling videos. You can start shopping on TikTok at 2am and pick up at lunch.

While digital-first brands burn through cash trying to figure out physical retail, these '90s retail stalwarts are engineering the industry's most sophisticated commerce experiences. They're not learning how to do stores—they've been perfecting them for decades. They just added the tech layer that makes them unstoppable.

"For 75 years, we were a dress company that had a tiny bit of technology," says David's Bridal CEO, Kelly Cook. "Now we are a technology platform that not only sells dresses, but also sells ads, sells 100+ other brands, and has the leading AI-enabled wedding planner."

The future of retail belongs to brands that understand a simple truth: Everything about how we shop has changed. But what we're shopping for—connection, discovery, community—hasn't. Heritage brands have known this all along.

200 data points and a 75-year head start

Here's what makes heritage brands dangerous when they go digital: they have decades of understanding around what their customers want. David’s Bridal, the largest formal wear retailer in the United States, has almost 200 data points on every bride. They know she'll spend eight hours a week on social media once she's engaged. They know 80% of her feed will become wedding content. They know she'll second-guess her dress choice 3.7 times.

“That data is great, but it does us no good if we can't do anything with it,” Kelly says.

In only nine months, David's Bridal replatformed their entire website, deployed endless aisle solutions, implemented digital point of sale across hundreds of stores, and migrated to the cloud.

And they built Diamonds & Pearls—a tech-savvy boutique store concept. Think interactive screens that remember your size. Stylists who know your Pinterest board before you walk in. The ability to order a dress that combines the sleeves from style A with the train from style B, delivered to your door in your exact measurements.

“If a shopper from the ‘90s walked into today's Diamonds & Pearls store, they would be pretty shocked,” says Elina Vilk, David Bridal's chief business officer. 

David's Bridal isn't alone in this transformation. Across the retail landscape, legacy brands are setting the new standard for what innovative modern commerce looks like.

50 Brands, one platform, infinite possibilities

While David's Bridal is building the bridal store of the future, Alex Baillargeon, EVP of Digital over at Authentic Brands Group (Authentic) is orchestrating something equally ambitious: transforming dozens of iconic brands into a unified commerce powerhouse.

Authentic's portfolio reads like a greatest hits of American retail—Juicy Couture, Nautica, Aéropostale, Champion, Reebok, Volcom, and Nine West. They're the company that sees heritage brands not as nostalgic throwbacks but as cultural assets with untapped potential.

These aren't brands stuck in the past—mobile now represents 75-80% of their traffic, a complete reversal from the 15% of just a decade ago. But rather than abandoning physical retail, they're using data to make stores more valuable than ever.

“Our business model is built on transformation,” says Alex. “We acquire beloved brands and position them for growth in the modern world. When a new brand comes into the Authentic portfolio, we need to replatform it fast. There really is no option other than Shopify."

Authentic has built a single Shopify theme that runs nine of its brands. It can spin up a new brand—complete with ecommerce, inventory, and customer data—in a week. That’s the time it takes most brands to choose their Pantone colors.

Because of this, Authentic can marry the generational trust of beloved brands with a digital strategy to match.

"New brands spend millions trying to build trust," Alex notes. "Our brands already have it. We just have to build the technology to deliver on it.”

These brands understand something their digital-native competitors don't: Shopping was never just about transactions. It's about the entire squad coordinating festival outfits. It's about your mom tearing up when you say yes to the dress. It's about experiences that, yes, photograph well for social media, but also create actual human memories.

"For our brands, retail is the stage," Alex explains. "It’s where brand meets emotion; where people can see it, hold it, and step into it. That connection becomes part of the story.”

"What we do is honor our loyal customers by creating experiences that meet them where they are,” Alex adds. “It’s not about the past or the future – it’s about making every moment feel relevant.”

Selling 6000 dresses through screens

Yet the same brands creating these theatrical in-store experiences are also pioneering something unexpected: virtual selling at scale.

"We have a team of virtual stylists, and this experience is powered entirely by Shopify," Elina says. “They show shoppers the catalog, measure them, everything happens virtually."

The result is successfully selling $6,000 wedding dresses sight unseen.

The place where every fourth bride in America gets her dress is selling their most expensive products to people who will never set foot in a store.

It's the same infrastructure. The same inventory. The same stylists. Just delivered differently. Thanks to a unified platform that makes these heritage brands as agile as a DTC startup. 

David’s Bridal also enhanced their virtual footprint with the launch of Pearl, an AI wedding planner that leverages David's 200 data points per bride for recommendations—what they call “the only agentic AI solution serving the wedding industry.” 

The technology transformation goes deeper than customer-facing features. "Before, we experienced a lot of toil," Elina explains. "Things like upgrades, patchwork, security concerns. Those things would halt our roadmap. Now we can just focus on the experience."

This shift from technical maintenance to innovation is what David’s Bridal credits as the game-changer. With unified commerce as the foundation, they're not just keeping up—they're setting the pace.

Change everything, keep everything

"You change or you die, period. That’s how modern commerce is," says Kelly.

For brands like these, not changing wasn't an option. But neither was abandoning what made them successful.

So they did something harder: They transformed while staying true to their core. Because disruption doesn’t require starting from scratch. It can take what already works—the trust, the relationships, the human moments that matter—and make it unstoppable with a unified commerce platform.

The lesson for every business, regardless of size? Know your shoppers deeply. Use technology to amplify what makes you special, not replace it. Build experiences that work for how people actually shop.

The brands that will thrive aren't the ones chasing the next thing. They're the ones with foundations strong enough to build anything on top.