The brands replacing Macy's in American malls are not American.

Walk the leasing pipeline of any top-performing mall in 2026.

The most in-demand new tenants are not American.

Primark just opened in Dubai to queues stretching 500 metres. Pop Mart signed 20+ locations with Simon. Uniqlo is targeting 200 North American stores by 2027. Gentle Monster, backed by LVMH, turns every store into a rotating art installation.

Simon Property Group named its hottest new tenants for 2026: Pop Mart, Gymshark, Princess Polly, Edikted, Subdued. Three of the five are international brands.

The tenant mix is changing faster than most mall narratives still admit.

Three signals.

Primark opened its first UAE store at Dubai Mall on March 26. The store spans 7,000 square metres, one of Primark's largest outside Europe. Queues reached 200 to 500 metres on opening day. Six hundred staff on the floor.

Store two opens at City Centre Mirdif on April 9. Store three at Mall of the Emirates in May. Then Bahrain (City Centre Bahrain) and Qatar (Doha Festival City) before year-end. Five GCC stores in one year through franchise partner Alshaya Group, the same operator behind The Avenues Kuwait and the upcoming Avenues Riyadh.

Simultaneously, Primark is opening its first Manhattan store at Herald Square, 78,000 square feet, directly across from Macy's. An Irish value retailer entering the two most competitive retail markets in the world in the same season.

Primark Interim CEO Eoin Tonge: the brand will reach 21 countries by end of 2026, up from 17.

What makes this signal structural: Primark is not a luxury brand. It is a volume-driven, trend-led value format with large footprints and no e-commerce. The only way to buy Primark is to walk into a store. That model, in 2026, is expanding faster internationally than almost any digital-first brand. Physical retail as the entire distribution strategy, not a complement to online.

This is not one brand. It is a pipeline.

Pop Mart (Beijing): 550+ stores globally, 60+ in North America, 20+ new locations signed with Simon Property Group at King of Prussia, Sawgrass Mills, The Westchester, Arizona Mills. The product is a $15 blind-box collectible. The result is queues, repeat visits, and the kind of foot traffic that mid-tier apparel tenants stopped generating years ago.

Gentle Monster (Seoul): 81 stores in 14 countries. Parent company IICOMBINED also operates TAMBURINS (fragrance, BLACKPINK's Jennie as ambassador) and NUDAKE (desserts). Their HAUS concept stores in Seoul, Shanghai, and Shenzhen (6,900 sqm) are multi-floor spaces where kinetic sculptures and robotic installations rotate quarterly. LVMH invested through L Catterton Asia. Visitors come to photograph the space. Buying eyewear is secondary. The store itself functions as content.

Mixue (Zhengzhou): 45,000+ locations globally. More than Starbucks (41,000) and McDonald's (40,000). $1 ice cream and tea. Planning its first US store. The largest restaurant chain in the world by location count. Almost nobody in the West knows it exists.

Three brands. Three categories. One pattern: the tenants generating the strongest cultural pull in malls are being built in Asia and imported into Western retail.

Uniqlo confirmed 11 new US stores for 2026: four in New York City, plus Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Boston, Washington DC, and Maryland. Target: 200 stores in North America by 2027. CEO Fuminori Adachi: "thoughtful growth, right stores in right places." Uniqlo is opening faster in the US than any domestic apparel brand.

Birkenstock plans 40 new stores in 2026. The German footwear brand is moving from wholesale into direct retail at a pace that reshapes the footwear tenant category in premium malls and high streets.

Salomon expects 7 to 10 new US stores in 2026, targeting NYC, LA, Miami, and San Francisco, with additional European openings in Spain, Germany, and the UK. The French mountain sports brand has crossed from outdoor specialty into mainstream fashion retail. What started as a streetwear trend is becoming a permanent tenant category.

These are not niche entrants. They are credible backfill candidates for inline space that US mid-tier specialty left behind, with stronger productivity per square foot, cleaner brand heat, and clear international rollout logic. The space vacated by Ann Taylor, Francesca's, and Eddie Bauer is not staying empty. It is being filled by Tokyo, Munich, and Annecy.

→ Netflix House. Two 100,000-square-foot experiential stores opened in Philadelphia and Dallas in late 2025. Las Vegas in 2027. Worth watching whether streaming IP can sustain foot traffic as a repeatable format or whether it remains a one-off novelty.

→ Bershka opening its first US physical stores in Miami. Inditex's third brand on American soil after Zara and Massimo Dutti. If Bershka scales in the US, Inditex will operate three distinct price tiers in the same malls.

→ Shein's forced pivot to physical. First permanent store in Harajuku. Spaces inside BHV Paris drew 50,000 visitors in five days. EU ending duty-free parcels under €150. If Shein is pushed deeper into physical retail by regulation, landlords will have to decide whether to treat it as a short-term traffic draw or a credible long-term tenant.

→ Hoka opening in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Deckers Brands has 48 owned stores globally and flagships in London and Paris. Berlin and Milan next. Running shoes signing street-level retail in expensive neighborhoods is worth tracking as a potential new tenant category.

→ The four tenant categories clearing underwriting fastest: off-price (Ross, Burlington), hard-discount grocery (Aldi), fitness (Crunch Fitness), and high-volume QSR (Raising Cane's). If your leasing pipeline doesn't include at least one, you're fighting the market grain.

The brands generating the strongest foot traffic and the most cultural pull in shopping centres right now are not American.

Primark from Dublin. Pop Mart from Beijing. Gentle Monster from Seoul. Uniqlo from Tokyo. Salomon from Annecy.

This is not just a shift in tenant mix. It is a shift in where retail formats are created. For decades, American malls exported retail concepts to the world. Now they are importing them. The innovation layer has moved.

The leasing teams that recognize this first will have an advantage for the rest of the decade.

That's the signal.

Mati
Editor, Malls Money

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