Abercrombie & Fitch Unveils New Fifth Avenue Flagship
There are some major changes afoot for Abercrombie & Fitch in Midtown Manhattan.
Although the company has had a store on Fifth Avenue for nearly 20 years that has long drawn lines outside, the space is being reimagined to reflect a new design aesthetic intended to better appeal to today’s customer.
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“It will look nothing like it used to,” said Fran Horowitz, chief executive officer of the Columbus, Ohio-based retailer.
On Friday, a new Abercrombie & Fitch store will open at 668 Fifth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets. It will take the space formerly occupied by the company’s Hollister brand and will replace the existing A&F store at 720 Fifth Avenue at 56th Street, which will be closing. The original Abercrombie store on 56th Street opened in 2005 and Hollister joined the fray in 2010.
The new Abercrombie store is bright and airy and offers a wide breadth of the company’s product offering across categories and sub-brands. That includes dedicated shops for both the children’s collection, Abercrombie Kids, as well as its activewear brand, YPB (Your Personal Best).
The multilevel store features illuminated walls, sconced columns and unique chandeliers. The slate storefront is unique to the location and the use of wood, textiles, conversational spaces, greenery and textured walls is designed to offer an updated and inviting experience.
“It’s 180 degrees from the cavernous, dark club feeling of the past,” Horowitz said. “This is the antithesis of that.”
The assortment too has been updated and now centers around what she calls the “96-hour weekend,” or essential looks for a long weekend that encompasses everything from relaxing at home to working out or having dinner with friends. “We’re servicing them for all occasions,” she said.
That’s the reason for the addition of the activewear shop. The only other YPB shop is in the company’s Boston store on Newbury Street that opened in March and it has been “very well received,” Horowitz said. “We talked to our customer and they said they like to work out on the weekend, so we listened.”
She said that over the past couple of years, A&F Co. has been aggressive in revamping its store fleet. Some 130 stores, representing around 1 million square feet, were shuttered during the pandemic, bringing its Abercrombie & Fitch store count down to around 200 worldwide.
In addition, those that remained are significantly smaller, she said. “We’ve been on quite a stores journey. We’ve reduced the square footage and size of our stores globally. We learned that our customers prefer smaller, more efficient places to shop.”
So the behemoth stores of the past, which could be as large as 30,000 to 50,000 square feet, are now closer to 4,000 to 6,000 square feet for Abercrombie and 5,000 to 7,000 square feet for Hollister. Most Abercrombie stores in the past were 10,000 to 12,000 square feet.
The fleet is split between malls and street locations with Abercrombie found in both locations while Hollister will continue to be primarily mall based, although there is a unit on 34th Street in New York City.
Despite all the predictions of the death of the mall, Horowitz said the company is still a fan of shopping centers. “Malls are still important to us,” she said. But they have to be A and B malls where the consumer continues to visit and shop. “We drive a lot of traffic to malls,” she said. “Malls are not dead, the stores in them just have to be the right size and location and offer the right economics.”
In certain situations, street sites are also appropriate, depending upon the location. In addition to downtown Boston and now New York, the company also opened two stores in Chicago last year and is planning another on Greenwich Avenue in Connecticut.
The new design concept that is featured in New York will serve as a model for other units going forward. In locations where the lease is up and the store will be retained, it will be remodeled to this design, she said. Ditto for when the company opens new street or mall locations.
The new look debuted last year and around 20 stores now sport the design globally.
It indicates the company’s belief in the power of brick-and-mortar. Although having an online presence is essential for the brand’s digitally savvy consumer, they have also made it clear that they like a physical experience. “Omnichannel is very important to us,” she said.
Although Horowitz couldn’t provide any details on current business or projections for back-to-school, saying the company is in a quiet period before its earnings release next month, the retailer has been performing well of late.
In the quarter ended April 29, net income rose 2 percent to $16.57 million from $16.47 million in the year-ago period. Operating income reached $34 million and $38 million on a reported and adjusted non-GAAP basis, respectively, as compared to an operating loss of $10 million and $6 million last year, on a reported and adjusted non-GAAP basis, respectively. Net sales rose 3 percent to $836 million, compared to $812.76 million in the year-ago period. Comparable sales rose 3 percent.
Specifically, the Abercrombie brand, which targets young adults, was up 14 percent in the period, on top of last year’s 13 percent gain. Hollister, which had been operating in the red, is back to being profitable.
This prompted the company to raise its outlook for 2023 with net sales projected to rose 2 to 4 percent from $3.7 billion in 2022.
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