abercrombie

Abercrombie & Fitch NYSE: ANF, is a specialty clothing retailer encompassing four brands: Abercrombie & Fitch, abercrombie Kids, Hollister Co., and Ruehl 925. The merchandise is sold in the brands' retail stores, catalogs, and online. As of 2006, the company operated 350 Abercrombie & Fitch stores in all U.S. states except Wyoming, and five stores in Canada and plans to continue expanding in Canada while its first European store is opening in London, UK.

Founded in 1892, the company was for many decades mainly an elite sporting goods retailer. After many years of success, the company struggled economically from the late 1960s until it was purchased by The Limited in 1988 and revamped as a lifestyle brand.

History

Early years

During the beginning of the 20th century, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. was one of the most popular retail stores for America's sporting elite. The company was known for outfitting some of America's most influential leaders and celebrities on their sporting excursions. Every president from Theodore Roosevelt to Gerald Ford is said to have been outfitted by the company in some capacity (Teddy Roosevelt was an especially enthusiastic Abercrombie & Fitch customer, and he frequently visited the store in preparation for his famous African affairs). Other famous people to pass through Abercrombie & Fitch's doors include Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Greta Garbo, Katharine Hepburn, Clark Gable, John Steinbeck, and author Ernest Hemingway (who is said to have bought the gun he used to commit suicide at Abercrombie & Fitch).^[1]

Abercrombie & Fitch began as a small waterfront shop and factory in lower Manhattan on June 4, 1892. David Abercrombie, born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, was a former trapper, prospector, topographer and railroad surveyor. He was also an inventor, an ingenious designer of tents, rucksacks and other camping equipment. It was his love of the great outdoors that inspired him to begin Abercrombie & Co., a shop dedicated to selling only the highest quality camping, fishing and hunting gear. His clientele consisted mostly of professional hunters, explorers and trappers. In 1900, Ezra Fitch, a wealthy New York lawyer and loyal customer, expressed a desire to buy into the growing company. Abercrombie accepted his offer, and Fitch joined as a partner. Soon thereafter, the shop moved to a larger location at 314 Broadway. In 1904, the store became incorporated and the official name of the company was changed to Abercrombie & Fitch Co.

Abercrombie & Fitch Co.

The partnership, however, was ill-fated. Abercrombie was more conservative, content to continue the store as it was, selling professional gear to professional outdoorsmen. Fitch, on the other hand, was more of a visionary. He was positive that the future of the business lay in expansion, selling the outdoors and its delights to more of the general public. The two quarrelled frequently, even as the company grew increasingly successful. In 1907, Abercrombie sold his share in the company to Fitch and returned to manufacturing outdoor goods. Fitch continued the business with other partners and was, for the first time, able to direct the company in a manner to his pleasing.

Fitch determined that the store ought to have an outdoor feeling. Stock was not hidden behind glass cabinets. Instead, it was displayed as if in use. He set up a tent and equipped it as if it were out in the middle of the wilds of the Adirondacks. A campfire blazed in one corner, where an experienced guide was always in attendance, imparting valuable information to interested customers. Part of Fitch's strategy to expand the company was the creation of a mail-order catalog. In 1909, Abercrombie & Fitch mailed out over 50,000 copies of its 456 page catalog, which included outdoor clothing, camping gear, articles, and advice columns. The cost of the catalog nearly bankrupted the company, but it proved to be a profitable marketing device. By 1913, the store moved to a more fashionable and easily accessible midtown address just off Fifth Avenue, expanding its inventory to include sport clothing. A&F became the first store in New York to supply such clothing to women as well as men. In 1917, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. moved yet again to a twelve-story building on Madison Avenue. The store occupied the entire available space, making it the world's largest sporting goods store. Outside, a sign proclaimed, "Where the Blazed Trail Crosses the Boulevard."

The flagship store included many different amenities. In the basement there was a shooting range, on the mezzanine there was paraphernalia for skiing, archery, skin-diving, and lawn games. The second through the fifth floors were reserved for clothing that was suitable for any climate or terrain. On the sixth floor, there was a picture gallery and a bookstore that focused on sporting themes, a watch repair facility and a golf school, fully equipped with a resident professional. The seventh floor included a gun room, stuffed game heads, and about seven hundred shot guns and rifles. The eighth floor was dedicated solely to fishing, camping, and boating. It also included a desk that belonged to a fly- and bait-casting instructor who gave lessons at the pool, which was located on the roof. The fishing section of the store alone was stocked with over 48,000 flies and over 18,000 fishing lures. The clerks hired at Abercrombie & Fitch were not professional salesmen, but rugged outdoorsmen. Talking was their pleasure and selling was performed only at the customers' insistence.

Post-Ezra Fitch

In 1928, Ezra Fitch retired from the company. Despite the change in ownership, Abercrombie & Fitch continued to expand. In 1939, it adopted the slogan, "The Greatest Sporting Goods Store in the World." By 1962, the company operated stores in Chicago, Illinois (Von Lengerke & Antoine, an affiliated sporting goods retailer since 1928), and San Francisco, California, wintertime-only stores in Palm Beach, Florida and Sarasota, Florida; and summertime-only stores in Bayhead, New Jersey; and Southampton, New York, and Hyannis, Massachusetts. The expansion continued through the early 1970's, when the company opened new stores in Colorado Springs, Colorado (the Broadmoor Hotel); Short Hills, New Jersey; Bal Harbour, Florida; Troy, Michigan and its final expansion in Oakbrook, Illinois. Despite the chain's apparent success, the company began to falter financially in the late 1960s and went bankrupt in 1977. Oshman's, a sporting goods retailer, acquired Abercrombie soon thereafter, but the company continued to struggle.

1990-2000 - Revival of Abercrombie & Fitch

During 1988, The Limited Inc. (now called Limited Brands) acquired Abercrombie & Fitch, determined to reinvigorate the ailing brand. The Limited had been successful in rolling out new concept stores, such as Express, which sold women's clothing, and Victoria's Secret, which sold lingerie and beauty products. Over the next decade, Abercrombie & Fitch was carefully rebuilt as a teen apparel merchandiser by CEO Mike Jeffries.^[2] In BusinessWeek's May 30 2005 issue, it said, "'Abercrombie's biggest weakness is that it is all about Mike,' says A.G. Edwards & Sons (AGE) analyst Robert Buchanan."

The company began opening stores in upscale malls across America in the early 1990s, targeting teenagers and college students aged 18-24.^[3] Abercrombie & Fitch is a self-proclaimed "casual luxury" retailer. The clothing consists of: woven shirts, denim, miniskirts, cargo shorts, wool sweaters, polo shirts, and t-shirts. The clothing produced in the 1990s was fairly consistent with the brand's preppy image and tended to be less trend-driven than today's offerings, which bear significantly less resemblance to traditional Northeastern prep school apparel. The store quickly became successful, and by the mid-1990s, there were dozens of Abercrombie & Fitch stores in the United States.^[4] Careful marketing made the brand synonymous with understated, sexy, classic casualwear.^[5] In 1996, The Limited took Abercrombie & Fitch public on the New York Stock Exchange and gradually phased out its ownership of the company.

2000-today

The company has opted to build only large stores, averaging 8,000 to 20,000 square feet (700 to 2,000 m²) in high-volume retail centers around the country. Throughout the 1990s, Abercrombie & Fitch enjoyed sales of over $400/ft² ($4300/m²) —high by retail standards—but that number has dropped significantly in recent years. As of 2003, sales were $345/ft² ($3700/m²).

In 2003, the company expanded its New Albany, Ohio headquarters (a suburb of Columbus, Ohio)[1]. Set amid acres of forest, the compound features rustic, farm-styled structures with elements of modern architecture, a reflection of the company's outdoorsy roots. The campus includes a mess hall, fire pits, trails, a recreational center, and an Abercrombie & Fitch store, where marketing and design elements are developed. The interior design bears a likeness to the stores, furnished with dark wood and concrete floors, leather couches, and comfortably worn rugs.

Beginning in 2004, the chain began closing nearly two dozen Abercrombie & Fitch and abercrombie stores.

In November of 2005, the company completed construction of its flagship Fifth Avenue location in New York City. The store features four-levels of selling space with dark lighting, mannequins grouped together inside glass cases (as well as vintage rifles on another level) and wood shutters that hang inside every window. Fifth Avenue is the largest store in the chain and is located on 56th street and 5th Avenue, alongside boutiques by luxury retailers such as Fendi, Prada, and Chanel. As of August 2006, the company completed the rennovation of its store in The Grove at Farmers Market in Los Angeles into their second flagship.

The company is developing a fifth concept, currently referred to as Concept 5, which is expected to be introduced in 2007. While the company remains tight-lipped on the latest concept, it is rumored that the Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas, NV will be among its first locations. Some are speculating that the latest concept could be a lingerie store which would aim to compete with Victoria's Secret and American Eagle Outfitters' new aerie concept stores, although this is currently mere speculation.

Abercrombie & Fitch today

Marketing and management

The original store concept (referred to as the "chain store" concept) hearkened back to the outdoorsy image of company's early years. The store resembled a hunting lodge, with plaid carpeting, dark wood fixtures, and antler chandeliers. However, the company introduced a new store concept (referred to as the "canoe store" concept) in the late 1990s to accommodate its rapid growth. The first canoe store opened in June 1996 in Chesterfield Mall (Store #0634) in Chesterfield (St. Louis), MO. This original canoe store, however, does not have a white wooden front like most of today's A&F stores, but rather a tan stucco front with navy awnings. Common design elements of the canoe store prototype include a moose head mounted above the cashwrap and a canoe is mounted in the main room of each canoe store. Unlike the chain store, which typically has a wider storefront and two entrances, the canoe store has one main entrance and is walled off into at least five rooms. Most of A&F's stores are (or have been remodeled to be) canoe stores, a few chain stores still exist. An example of a chain store location is at South Hills Village Mall in Pittsburgh, PA is still a classic chain store complete with plaid carpeting and preppy wallpaper, although all of the antler chandeliers have been taken down from the ceiling.

Abercrombie & Fitch has complete control over the design and production of its merchandise, stores, and marketing. Because it spends little on external advertising, the company depends upon the store experience to help define the brand. The company strictly regulates the store environment in an effort to provide a consistent, pleasureful experience for customers in a manner that can be replicated in each store. Factors such as visual presentation, music, and fragrance are not left to chance. The company also specifies in painstaking detail how lighting, layout, visual displays, marketing, and fixtures are to be placed and used in every store. Each store is spritzed hourly with men’s cologne in order to ensure a pleasant sensory experience. Every store plays the same pre-produced music segment for a period of four to five weeks and has instructions on how loud the music is to be played at certain times of the day or week.

Merchandising is managed in a similar fashion. Every week, each store is sent a booklet—often over 100 pages long—detailing the exact specifications for placing merchandise on the sale floor. Older merchandise is shuffled around to provide a different presentation for frequent customers each time they enter the store, while new items are generally placed out in the front rooms for display. Apparel is laid out so that customers can feel the fabrics, contributing to the sensory experience offered in-store.

The company manages merchandising, distribution, and sales by assigning each store a tier level (1, 2, 3, 4, or 5) and a volume level (A, B, C, D, E, or F). Tier level determines what selection of the current clothing line is sent to a store. Tier 1 stores receive all of the current items in all styles and colors, for example, while lower tier stores are sent less merchandise in a smaller range of sizes and colors. A store's tier level is independent of its volume, since allocation is often dependent on available area of selling space. Some small stores are relatively high volume, but lack the floor space needed to support the entire line. A store can have different tier designations for its men's and women's sides. (Women's retail normally outperforms men's by a ratio of about 2:1, though in certain markets the difference is greater or less.) The company designates Volume A stores, usually in major cities and tourist destinations, as "elite" or "super-elite." There are three super elite (AA) stores (Ala Moana in Honolulu, Aventura in Miami, and South Street Seaport in New York City) and less than thirty elite (A) stores in the chain including the new international store in West Edmonton Mall, the largest indoor mall in North America in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.^[6]

International expansion

The company marked its expansion into Canada in January of 2006, opening two Abercrombie & Fitch stores and three Hollister Co. stores in that country. This summer a third Abercrombie & Fitch store will open in the Toronto Eaton Centre. The company will add additional stores in Canada during the next several years and plans to open stores in Europe and Asia by 2007. One more additional location is scheduled to open in Boston (for the third time) this will be the only Abercrombie store in the city. Construction is opted for late 2006. As the Abercrombie & Fitch brand reaches its full growth potential in the U.S., the company is depending on Hollister Co., RUEHL, and "Concept 5" to act as its primary growth vehicles in the U.S. The company will also begin expanding the brands internationally, expanding to Europe, London by 2007 and Japan by 2009.

Flagship stores

Abercrombie & Fitch currently has three flagship stores aimed at various audiences.

abercrombie Kids

Main article: abercrombie Kids

Abercrombie Kids is a smaller version of the original store with youth sizes, which aims to attract patrons ages 7-14. The store uses the same moose logo, but the name is spelled with a lowercase "a". The prices of abercrombie are cheaper that the normal Abercrombie & Fitch expensive prices.

Hollister Co.

Main article: Hollister Co.

Hollister Co. is a California-inspired apparel brand that attracts patrons 14-25 with its highly colorful clothes, and moderate prices.

RUEHL 925

Main article: RUEHL 925

RUEHL is brand with a New York vibe that caters to the post-college consumer. The store carries business casual and leather goods to target ages 22-35.

Lifestyle brand

Abercrombie & Fitch aggressively positions itself as a "lifestyle brand "—a brand that embodies the values and appeal of a desirable way of living. The stores are plastered with photos of physically attractive young models, blast loud dance music through powerful speakers, and smell of the company's signature cologne. The stores are also staffed with attractive Brand Representatives (models), young salespeople who embody the Abercrombie & Fitch lifestyle: attractive, athletic, popular, enthusiastic, and outgoing. For years, brand representatives were required to wear only Abercrombie & Fitch clothing, but such regulations have been loosened following lawsuits. The term "brand representative" is no longer used, and associates are currently referred to as "models." Also, the "Impact Team" was created in 2004 in order to better control merchandise within each store and maintain company standards. Impact Team members are less responsible for customer service and more responsible for ensuring that the sales floor is appropriately filled with merchandise from stock supply. In 2005, a full-time stock position that had been previously done away with was readded in order to better control back-stocked merchandise. Some speculate that the Impact Team also supplies the company with better equal opportunity employment as style and personality are less important for Impact Team members who interact less with customers.

A&F Quarterly

The most conspicuous of the company's lifestyle branding efforts was its now-defunct magazine, A&F Quarterly, which the company published from 1997 to 2003. The publication was a hybrid magazine and catalog (company officials referred to it as a "magalog"), and featured advice columns, articles about college life, and—most famously—the highly sexual work of photographer Bruce Weber. The racy publication made a splash with young customers and had one of the highest circulation rates among young adults of any magazine in the late 1990s. The magazine also gained a certain iconic, coffee-table status among gay men because of its heavy doses of shirtless young men and homoerotic imagery. Print advertisements for the A&F Quarterly appeared in Interview and Out magazines in addition to Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair. In 1999, the company rolled out "A&F TV", a feature that spotlights young people engaged in sports and leisure activities. A&F TV was originally developed to run on cable television and on monitors in Abercrombie & Fitch stores, but currently is offered only on the company's website.

Controversy and criticism

A&F Quarterly

Main article: A&F Quarterly

The A&F Quarterly became a lightning rod for controversy shortly after it was published. It featured photographs of male and female models, often nude, posing in pairs or groups. Despite a company policy restricting sale of the publication to adults, critics charged that the publication was readily sold to minors. Several states threatened to pursue legal action, though the company was never charged with violating any related statutes.

The publication was also criticized on moral grounds, for featuring sexually explicit interviews with porn stars, and articles that, according to critics, glamorized alcohol consumption, group sex, homosexuality and self-performed oral sex. In 2003, an array of religious organizations, women's rights activists, and Asian-American groups organized boycotts and protests over the publication, and the "Christmas Edition" of the catalog was removed from stores.^[7] In 2004, "A&F Magazine", a comparatively tame collection of photos and essays about rising celebrities, replaced the publication altogether.

Products

The company's clothing has also been the subject of criticism. In 2002, controversy erupted over shirts featuring caricatures of Asians and other ethnic groups. One shirt featured the slogan "Wong Brothers Laundry Service—Two Wongs Can Make It White" with smiling figures in conical hats, a 1900s popular-culture depiction of Chinese immigrants. The company discontinued the designs and apologized after a boycott by Asian-American student groups. That same year, the children's clothing division removed a line of thong underwear sold for girls in pre-teen children's sizes after parents mounted nationwide storefront protests. The underwear included phrases like "Eye Candy" and "Wink Wink" printed on the front.

More T-shirt controversy occurred twice in 2004. The first incident involved a shirt featuring the phrase, "It's All Relative in West Virginia," an apparent jab at incest relations in the rural South. West Virginia governor Bob Wise spoke out against the company for depicting "an unfounded, negative stereotype of West Virginia," but the shirts were not removed.^[8]

The second incident involved another t-shirt with the phrase "L is for Loser" written next to a picture of a male gymnast on the rings. The company stopped selling the shirt in October of 2004 after USA Gymnastics president Bob Colarossi announced a boycott of Abercrombie & Fitch for mocking the sport.

In November 2005, the Women & Girls Foundation of Southwest Pennsylvania launched a "girl-cott" of the store for selling T-shirts bearing phrases like "Who needs brains when you have these?" in reference to large breasts and dumb blondes. The campaign went national on NBC's The Today Show, and the company pulled the shirts from stores on November 5, 2005.^[9]

Bob Jones University and its affiliated precollegiate schools — Bob Jones Academy, Bob Jones Junior High School, and Bob Jones Elementary School — forbid Abercrombie & Fitch clothing to be "worn, carried, or displayed" on its campuses because of "an unusual degree of antagonism to the name of Christ and an unusual display of wickedness" in the company's advertising. [2]

Employment practices

For four years, Abercrombie & Fitch has faced accusations of discrimination against minority employees. A 2004 lawsuit — Gonzalez v. Abercrombie & Fitch — accused the company of discriminating against minority employees by offering desirable positions to white employees. The company agreed to an out-of-court settlement of the class action suit. As part of the settlement terms, A&F agreed to pay US$45 million to rejected applicants and affected employees, institute policies and programs that promote diversity in its workforce and advertising campaigns, appoint a Vice President of Diversity, hire 25 recruiters to seek minority employees, and discontinue the practice of recruiting employees at primarily white fraternities and sororities.^[10]

Trivia

• On a Christmas epsidode of the animated program The Simpsons the family after geetting ahold of a large sum of money is able to go shopping at the upscale mall where A&F is parodied as Abercrombie & Rich for its high prices.
• In the gay community the term "Aberzombie" has come into use to describe those who idolize the brand, its models, and their "look", two Aberzombies, usually a couple, are reffered to as Aberzombie and Bitch.
• Popular belief is that the A&F brand Hollister is named after the San José area town, it is however named after Hollister Ranch.
• Before being sucessful actors Tom Welling and Ashton Kutcher were Abercrombie models, and worked together in the late 90s.

References

1. ^ Grauer, Neil A. "Remembering Papa." Cigar Aficionado, July/August 1999.
2. ^ Denizet-Lewis, Benoit. "The Man Behind Abercrombie & Fitch." Salon, 24 January 2006.
3. ^ Mitchell, Dan. "Enough Enron? There's More." The New York Times, 4 February 2006.
4. ^ Givhan, Robin. "The Fetching Men of Abercrombie & Fitch Aren't the Only Appeal Of New Marketing Campaign." The Washington Post, 7 August 1998.
5. ^ Elliott, Stuart. "Abercrombie & Fitch Extends a Print Campaign to TV." The New York Times, 6 August 1999.
6. ^ Earnest, Leslie. "Towering Over Retail Rivals: Abercrombie & Fitch, helped by shifts in its strategy, saw holiday sales jump while other apparel stores dragged." The Los Angeles Times, 17 January 2006; p. C1.
7. ^ Gross, Daniel. "Abercrombie & Fitch's Blue Christmas." Slate, 8 December 2003.
8. ^ Dao, James. "T-Shirt Slight Has West Virginia in Arms." The New York Times, 22 March 2004.
9. ^ "Abercrombie & Fitch to pull tees after "girl-cott." Reuters, 4 November 2005.
10. ^ "National Clothing Retailer Must Pay For Discrimination, The Defender, Winter 2005, 1. A publication of the NAACP LDF. Description of the settlement of Gonzalez.

External links

• Official Abercrombie & Fitch website
• Official Abercrombie Kids website
• Official Hollister website
• Official RUEHL No.925 website
• AFjustice website providing details about the discrimination lawsuit