Tony Melillo is back in retail action with a new SoHo store showcasing the refresh of his ATM brand of casual luxury essentials.

The creative director started the brand in 2012 with Public Clothing Co. and successfully built the business through wholesale for years. 

Melillo’s friendship with Steve Madden led the shoe company to buy the brand nearly a year ago. 

Now Melillo has a new lease on life — and a new lease on the 107 Spring Street store, at the corner of Mercer Street.

“It’s an amazing corner,” he said. “You just have traffic 24/7.”

Melillo designed the clean and modern space with the Los Angeles-based De-Yan design studio, which also helped recreate the brand logo. 

“It’s beautiful,” he said of the store. “It’s very upscale, which actually elevates the brand from just feeling like T-shirts. We’ve been able to expand all categories.” The store has plenty of cashmere and its signature elevated yet laid-back style.  

ATM has in essence been rebooted since the acquisition.

Its Instagram account was wiped, a TikTok store is in the works and college kids all over the country are going to serve as brand ambassadors this fall. 

“My 55-, 40-year-old customer is not going anywhere,” Melillo said. “They are the most loyal people. I’m so happy that I’ve never lost them. It’s the kids I want” to bring on board.

“My friends have kids, the kids go to Brown, the kids go to NYU, the kids go to Columbia University,” he said. “I’ve taken those kids, a hundred of them, and put them into my ambassador program.

“So between now and the end of the year, when there’s the homecoming and there’s the football game and there’s the parents coming to visit, these a hundred kids from all over, from the west to the east will be promoting ATM as my ambassadors.” 

Melillo toyed with the idea of working more heavily with celebrities, but decided someone doesn’t necessarily need to have their name in lights to have the kind of reach that will help spread the ATM word.

“In the world of fashion, we have tons of beautiful girls that are cool girls,” he said. “They have followings. They don’t necessarily even have a big following on Instagram. I’ve heard them say, ‘That’s not really my main focus. It’s about my YouTube, it’s about my TikTok, it’s about my podcast.’”

That will give the brand exposure in some new places. 

Melillo, who like almost all good merchants is very clearly a people person, is also staying close to the customer himself, hosting friends of the house and celebrities and “at the store and having very casual conversations around how they style the brand, what they like about the brand. I’ll also do styling sessions with our store sales team and my internal ATM team who represent the brand so well through their own personal style.”