The Spice Girls have been very, very good to Pembroke Pines-based Claire’s Stores. Their merchandise has been a hot item at the chain’s Claire’s Boutiques for several years. But Mr. Rags is for boys, mostly. That’s why you get the “Spice Girls suck” stickers for sale.Mr. Rags is a Seattle-based chain that Claire’s bought in October 1997 for $46 million.

Claire’s is known for selling costume jewelry and accessories to girls age 10 to 22. It’s now opening Mr. Rags at the rate of four a week. And Claire’s opened its first Mr. Rags store in South Florida on Friday at Pembroke Lakes Mall.Born in 1971, in the original bell-bottom era, Mr. Rags is almost as old as the Gap. It survived a 1983 bankruptcy filing. Today the chain specializes in surf, skate and urban fashions for boys, and even packs clothes for girls, too, in a compact, 2,400-square-foot store. Its audience starts at 15 and up.

Mr. Rags is small compared to Claire’s; it has 90 stores compared to over 2,000 Claire’s Boutiques. But the chain is counting it as a future growth vehicle. It’s opening 60 to 75 stores this year, compared to about 100 Claire’s and Icing girls’ clothing and accessories stores, and it hopes to have 400 to 500 stores in a few years, according to vice chairman Bonnie Schaefer.

Mr. Rags stores are expected to open later this year at Boynton Beach Mall and Coral Square mall in Coral Springs.

Stylistically, Mr. Rags is not as out there as Hot Topic, which is home to everything from punk to goth to wrestling merchandise. But it’s edgier than Pacific Sunwear, a chain that focuses on surfing and other fashions. Mr. Rags brands include Enyce, Fubu, Hook-ups for skateboards, and even Porn Star, which carries a label saying it shouldn’t be sold to people under 18.

Some of the T-shirts would be at home at a beachside Spring Break T-shirt shop. “Male prostitute” was one of the more printable examples.”It’s that kind of market; high school, college Spring Break,” Schaefer said.

The teen-age market is not an easy one; Edison Brothers, parent of J. Riggings, Wild Pair shoes, JW, and Coda this month filed for Chapter 11 for the second time.

But it can be a lucrative one. Claire’s is looking to dominate both ends of the teen market. “That market has the most disposable income, they go to the mall more than you or I,” Schaefer said.

The company has been not long recovering from a recent misfire. In January, it folded its just nikki 🙂 clothing catalog after the overhead proved too costly. Claire’s has been on a roll lately, with the stock up about 35 percent so far this year. Its sales at stores open more than a year were up 12 percent in February, and a strong 7 percent for 1998.

Though Mr. Rags’ warehouse is in suburban Chicago, as is the rest of the Claire’s chain, Claire’s keeps Mr. Rags’ buyers in Seattle.

“They have to be where the cutting edge stuff is, on the West Coast,” Schaefer said.

David Altaner can be reached at or 954-356-4668.