Three Reasons Why A&F Brand Is No Longer Famous

American teenagers

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (hereinafter referred to as "A&F") was once popular among young people in the United States. It can even be said that everyone is proud of having a A&F product.

A&F in the United States sexy, rebellious and so on to create brand image, to meet the preferences of young people.

It is because of the popularity of teenagers that A&F can sell products at full price, without promotions and discounts.

However, today's A&F is no longer in sight.

According to the latest financial results, as of the third quarter of this year, the overall sales of A&F fell by 12% to 911 million 400 thousand US dollars; due to the decrease in the number of people in the mall and the increase in discounts, net profit fell sharply by 25% to 30 million 400 thousand dollars, while the same store sales fell 10%, of which the US market fell 7% and the international market fell 15%.

Why? Because A&F's loyal customers have grown up, but these loyal consumers' younger brothers and sisters are not keen on this brand.

Many retail apparel industry experts point out that A&F is in an unprecedented difficult period.

Limited sales channels

Like China, e-commerce in the United States is constantly being encroached upon.

Market share, A&F is also one of the main victims.

The overall economy of the United States has entered a downward period, and growth is weak. Online shopping occupies an increasingly heavy market share.

Under the influence of e-commerce, the sales volume of American shopping centers is weakening, the retail market of retail centers is shrinking, and the main sales channel of A&F in the United States is shopping mall, which is very unfavorable for A&F.

The national retail union predicts that sales will increase by about 4.1% during the holidays. This is largely due to the growth of online retailing. However, because of the poor A&F network channel, holiday sales are also not ideal.

In the process of consumers pferring to the Internet, A&F has proposed an aggressive strategic deployment - the full channel strategy.

The full channel marketing strategy will provide consumers with more product choices. Network and physical stores should be complementary to each other. Only by supplementing each other, can two truly serve customers well.

A&F's "store pportation strategy" has been running in 370 stores in the United States, and the "store order service" has been running in 679 stores.

Unfortunately, from the sales data, the main consumer group of A&F has not been pferred to the network, so A&F is finally a shopping center as the main channel of heavy companies.

The prospect of LOGO removal is unknown.

With the sluggish sales and the rise of e-commerce, consumers are weak in A&F's LOGO products (A&F's LOGO products occupy its main share of sales).

A&F once led fashion, once the most popular brand among teenagers in the United States, but now more and more young consumers are attracted by fast fashion such as ZARA, Forever21 and H&M.

Too basic LOGO products have taken a major sales task in A&F sales, and A&F is also feeling consumers' avoidance of their LOGO products and declining preferences.

So at the beginning of this year, A&F made a decision to reduce most of the basic LOGO products in the 12 months of this year until basically not.

A&F successfully achieved this goal, but the reduction of LOGO products has also become an important reason for the decline in sales.

Of course, from a long-term perspective, removing the basic LOGO products, focusing on fashion products without Logo is the direction for A&F to strive for, and is also a sharp weapon to attract young consumers.

So the effectiveness of this strategy needs to be evaluated in the future, and the failure of the strategy can not be judged by the decline in sales.

CEO did not reshape brand positioning

A&F CEO Mike Jeffries is about to retire. In view of the serious downturn in sales, the departure of Jeffries is not surprising, whether it is to leave voluntarily or be forced to leave, is a good thing for brands.

What A&F wants to do now is to re find a leader who can lead A&F to brand image and attract young consumers.

It is undeniable that Jeffries has caught the youngest, the coolest, the sexiest young consumer, has established the brand influence, has molded the brand image, from the product to the shop, to the shopping environment and then to the shopping experience, then to the advertisement propaganda, the omni-directional grasped the consumer's heart.

So A&F didn't need a discount sale earlier, so there was a large number of loyal fans.

At the height of the A&F, consumers were proud of A&F's apparent LOGO. They flaunt the brand everywhere.

But as time went on, A&F's loyal customers grew up, but Jeffeies also focused on the older customers, apparently not in line with A&F's brand positioning.

This group of older consumers may have been proud of A&F's rebellious and sexy brand culture, because it is their youth interpretation, but as their age increases, their temperament will change, and rebellious and sexy can only stay in puberty.

So A&F must seize the needs of these people's brothers and sisters.

In the process, Jeffeies did not succeed in repositioning the brand. Now the competition is more intense and consumer attitudes are changing too fast. A&F's brand loyal consumers are decreasing.

Retail language: for fashion clothing brands, it is not an easy task to catch the hearts of consumers. Perhaps no brand can accompany consumers for a very long time.

Every period, consumers have different mentality and state and consumption ability, so their needs are constantly changing. In this process, many brands are constantly being abandoned by them.

At this time, brands often need to re grab their customers.

Such consumer groups are changing, so brands need to adapt themselves to new consumer groups from various aspects, including sales channels, product positioning, brand culture, advertising and so on.