The chain's July '09 comp store sales were a negative 28%, topped by June's astonishing 32% comp store decline, and matched again by May's negative 28%. Add those astounding negatives to a 23% drop in revenue in the second quarter plus April's negative 22% comp sales figure, March's negative 34%, February's negative 30%, and the fact that the chain hasn't posted a positive comp sales figure since April '08 (positive 6% ) and November '07 (positive 2%), and the financial picture is just not pretty.
Abercrombie's signature brand imagery has been much debated. Maligned as 'teen porn' and 'sexvertising,' the brand's male model
s cavort in an endless afternoon of sharp sunshine, even more sharply defined abs, and sharply beside-the-point young women. There is a blatant eroticizing of the teen male body and just as blatant a marginalizing of the female form (with or without clothing, they always look bored at being beside the point).
The stores themselves are also a signature experience: Basted in wall-to-wall music, at a volume level inexplicable and forbidding to customers over the age of 26, and darkened to an extreme matched only by the chain's Holister and Ruehl spinoffs.
Where to point the finger of blame for this well-branded failing brand? The recession...price points...merchandise...
Let's take a trip through retail history to a point in time just 20 years ago when another highly stylized and visually unique retail brand was experiencing a similar fall-off in consumer interest and sales.
Banana Republic-- in 1989 a store known for interiors awash in wild safari theme decor. Twelve foot tall stuffed giraffes, real size off-road jeeps, thatched roofs, elephant tusk door handles. And the merchandise itself was riddled with multi-pocketed vests and pants with
zippered legs for conversion to shorts and women's clothing reminiscent of Merrill Streep's wardrobe in the film "Out of Africa."Banana Republic had begun its existence as a catalog offering vintage military surplus gear and apparel. It morphed into a catalog business with a small retail presence (Mill Valley
and San Francisco) until Gap, Inc. purchased the business and supersized it.
The catalog was filled with item copy written with a decidedly un-catalog-like tone and was studded with item entries written by literary and celebrity guest writers.The camp stores, the wildly un-chain-store tone of the catalog, the romantic style of the garments offered for sale-- it was all just wonderful until the consumer stopped being interested. Then absolutely none of it mattered.
Banana Republic began a long, slow transformation from a novelty chain to the clothing resource for urban professionals that it is today. The question facing Abercrombie & Fitch is whether, or when, they will begin their own transformation from the highly unique point in the market they have achieved to one that will register with consumers in the future.
Retail is littered with chains and concepts that ran their course and failed to evolve further. Banana Republic is one of the few to have ever survived such a total identification with a merchandising fad. Abercrombie's fate remains to be seen.
--Timothy Cohrs
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