A&F: Unsinkable No More?

Holiday sales are down for the second year in a row at Abercrombie & Fitch. This leads me to wonder, optimistically, if we might be seeing the end of this faux fashion chain for good. I won't get ahead of myself and daydream that A&F will fall like a house of cards, but dismal holiday sales are never a good sign in retail.


The folks at Abercrombie have attributed this decline to a "broken business model" or a shift away from "aspirational pricing." Can't we just call this what it is? Kids can no longer spend freely with their parents' money and those who do have money rolling in from mom and pop are choosing to spend more wisely at lower-priced, more fashionable stores. In short, the jig is up, Abercrombie. The kids aren't buying the crap Michael Jeffries is churning out (season after season after season...does anything ever change there??).

Perhaps the "broken business model" is a model that was flawed from the beginning. Ridiculously overpriced, poorly made clothing housed in dark, noisy chambers sold by hapless kids who think, misguidedly, that they're cooler than you because they're being paid eight bucks an hour to sell this devoid-of-originality crap to teens who haven't developed a sense of style yet. That isn't exactly a winning business philosophy.

This business philosophy, to outsiders, looks a lot more exclusionary, which means that Jeffries has achieved his mission. In a 2006 interview in Salon.com, A&F's CEO, Michael Jeffries, was quoted as saying: "Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong [in our clothes], and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don't alienate anybody, but you don't excite anybody, either."

I don't know about you, but I've never met a "cool kid" who worked at Abercrombie. (Disclaimer: The corporate headquarters are different. I'm just talking about the retail stores here.)


So, I'm left with one question.


Would anyone who cares about the future of fashion be sad to see Abercrombie & Fitch cower away quietly into obscurity? I know that tastes in fashion are as varied as the food options in Manhattan, but there's almost always one thing that fashion-followers can agree on when it comes to style: A&F has got to go.