Name: Reinventing Abercrombie
Uploaded: 2025-10-16
Duration: 18 min 27 s
Description: Under Fran Horowitz, who comes in at No. 26 on this year’s MPW list, Abercrombie & Fitch has hit a record high in revenue – almost $5 billion. So, what’s next? We’ll explore the company’s global expansion plans, emerging growth opportunities, and how Horowitz has reinvented the brand’s aesthetic and values for a new generation.

Under Fran Horowitz, who comes in at No. 26 on this year’s MPW list, Abercrombie & Fitch has hit a record high in revenue – almost $5 billion. So, what’s next? We’ll explore the company’s global expansion plans, emerging growth opportunities, and how Horowitz has reinvented the brand’s aesthetic and values for a new generation.

Reinventing Abercrombie

Conferences

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me and congratulations from what I understand has been an incredibly successful conference, so congratulations to all of you. Thank you so much. It's been fun. Hopefully we can agree. So as we just heard, Abercrombie has kind of gone through this bit of a reinvention, but I want to start with when you took over. Sure, you inherited a company and especially a brand that was seriously struggling. There'd been years of declining relevance and even among some a really actively negative perception of a brand that was exclusionary, overly sexual towards young people and teens. So what was your first step to turn that around? How did you approach it and what made you believe it could work? Sure. So I took a deep breath. I dove headfirst in just for a little bit of background, since I never know where people are on the story. Um, I joined the company in 2011 as um, President of Hollister, and at that point we had both brands, obviously struggling quite a bit. And the first thing that we really had to do was decide whether or not we had one brand or two. As a merchant at heart, you know, when I went on my interview process and I shopped the stores, I realized that the brands really weren't differentiated. They really were kind of the same brand, just with a different label, different quality, different price point. So that was really decision number one, and we decided to anchor Hollister as the true global teen brand, and that transformation was candidly a lot easier than Abercrombie simply because it wasn't the namesake of the company and as you mentioned, it didn't have quite the same challenging um reputation. Less baggage, less baggage, but still a very difficult business and um declining brand health. So we anchored that, and then we inspected Abercrombie. We did global consumer insights. We did a lot of research, and what we learned was a couple of things. First, that there was Affinity and love still for the brand, despite everything that it had been through. But there was an opportunity to really age up the brand and put it in the twenty-something age range and not compete with Hollister and not be a teen brand. And that was really the beginning of the success. And then, you know, the long story short is we evolved from being a jeans and t-shirt business to a lifestyle brand. We were able to invite the customer from early 20s to to almost 40 or over and expanded lots of categories and exciting new businesses that we dove into. So tell us more about that strategy. I mean, it's been to kind of lean into everything millennials who have such fondness for the brand from their youth, everything that they need today, and I think you've said everything they need for a weekend. Um, but what made millennials come back to Abercrombie to go from that kind of affinity to actually shopping? Um, I think we created a new brand that the, the millennials plus really fell back in love with for many reasons. Most importantly, we welcomed a very different customer. We were very open, very diverse. We um, we increased our sizing, we increased our categories. I mean, truly the, the, the pinnacle moment was when we created something called Curve Love. Which invited a whole new denim customer into the brand, and you know, say what you want about social media. There's good, there's bad, but we went completely viral on TikTok and what we heard from the consumer was, oh my God, Abercrombie is back. I can't believe this is Abercrombie. I can't believe I feel so good wearing this brand. And Curb Love was really the beginning of opening up a whole new consumer into the brand. Where did the idea for Curb Love come from? What gave you that insight? So we are very, very close to our customer. We spend an inordinate amount of time talking to our customer, and what they Told us was that they love the brand, they love the denim, they love the quality, but it just, they can't wear it. We've never had appealed to a curvier figure and there were so many people who wanted to be a part of the brand, so we introduced it. We, um, changed our sizing from the sense of, you know, very narrow sizing to a very broad-based consumer, and that just got the whole flywheel going and the conversation with the consumer. So there's this thing that you're really listening to your customer, and that is very different from what Abercrombie was doing in its earlier days. Exactly, yeah, the brand was telling people what was cool and so you reversed that. You went from telling to listening, but my question is, like, do you think a brand, Abercrombie or anyone else could ever be that arbiter of cool again in today's world where consumers have like such loud voices? Is that still possible? Um, you know, cool is a, it's a tough word. I mean, I think what you want to be is a brand that appreciates the values that your customers share with you, and I think we do that in in many ways by supporting all different aspects and events that are happening in their lives. I think the partners that we work through philanthropically that support their values are important to them. So I think it's more important that the brand stands for what you can relate to more so than being like the, the cool, the cool brand. So that's the thing of the past. I'm sorry, that's the thing of the past. Um, I mean, I guess it's a, it's a word in everybody's vocabulary. It's certainly out there, but um it's. Not, it's not what we're aspiring to be. We're aspiring to be a long lasting lifestyle brand that someone can wear and enjoy for many, many years. Yeah, on that point, you know, you've been describing this period of this really successful turnaround. More recently, you have seen sales growth slow a bit. Um, you know, obviously different categories within that, but what's going on from your perspective, um, is something changing with the millennial consumer? Um, what does it take to keep them passionate about Abercrombie beyond this initial excitement that you guys were back? I mean, I've been in this business for 40 years. Um, there will always be cycles within this business, and that's our job to make sure that the teams stay focused on the customer, that their assortment architecture is lined up, that they're understanding what is important and valuable to the consumer, and I'm excited about where we are. We are in our growth stage. Our Hollister business is um off the charts. We had a tremendous back to school through Hollister, and so you just have to, you have to ride the waves sometimes, but the brand is extremely healthy. I mean, I think, you know, the introduction we talked about the partnership we just formed with the NFL. That is an incredibly iconic global brand that came to us to shake hands and become the first fashion partnership, so that speaks. Spas about, you know, how, how valuable the brand is today and where we are. So they came to you, yeah. And what did they say when they came to you? Well, so it's a very authentic partnership. It started 3 or 4 years ago through licensing where we honestly started with 5 teams. We have a test and learn culture, so we do everything pretty judiciously and make sure we're ready to, we're ready to go. So we started with 55 teams in men's only and had a tremendous success. Then we added more teams and as she mentioned, we now have 32 teams men's, women's, kids, and pets as well. And I think the NFL saw the growth in the business and the reaction from the consumer because we put a product out there that was considerably different than what other people were doing. And they were looking for their first fashion partner. The demographics of their fandom and who we are are very adjacent, so you may not know, but 50% of their fandom is female, so that's very important for us, and the majority of their consumer really. Ranges from 20 to 40, so there's a ton of parallels and synergies for for the brands. Yeah, and so what role do you feel like you're playing in kind of helping the NFL capitalize on that female fan and not just have them watch but like be like a more engaged present fan? Well, I mean, I think the opportunity for us specifically is customer awareness, customer acquisition, brand awareness. I think that even though 50% of their fandom is female, perhaps they're not recognized or celebrated as much as they can be, and they haven't been served. By merch, exactly, and it's in two ways actually. One, that's not, as the team likes to say, it's not pink and sparkly and that women like to wear something that's much more sophisticated when they want to cheer for their teams. And we've also worked out an opportunity with them which is not just about um. The actual NFL logo, right, but it's about game day and perhaps how that whole head to toe outfitting works for both men and for women, how you're going to celebrate your team, and that styling piece of it is going to be very fun as we continue to evolve. Do you have any pets? Have they worn the pet merch? I have a grand pet pet, I guess you would call it. My son has a, my son has a dog, and yes, he very proudly wears his giant sweatshirt since that's we are Giants fans. That's. Maybe you can show us some photos later. Just a reminder, we'll have the opportunity for questions. If you have any, please start thinking and we'll come to you. Um, so you mentioned that you know sales growth is slowing a bit at Abercrombie. It's going really well at Hollister. What is behind that? What's working well? Is it this kind of Y2K nostalgia we're seeing? Is it something else? So the Hollister team, incredibly proud of them. Again, you know, the cycles of retail, they really dug in and got close to that customer and understood several things about that consumer and most importantly were the life moments that mattered to them. So we started a collegiate opportunity and whether you're going to go to college or not, there's a whole aspirational part of going to college. It starts very early in their high school career wearing wearing different schools that they're excited about, whether it's through sports or otherwise. And so the collegiate piece was a big win. We also created the year of a senior. And that was something that really resonated and helped us take our consumer who was leaving us around 16 or 17 and stay a few more years and realize that the brand, I'll use your word, was actually cool again and that they could continue to wear it and it wasn't just like their younger brother, younger sister's brand, but there was much more, much more to it. So again, it's staying close to that customer and really understanding and appreciating their life moments and making sure you're there for them. Yeah. Any questions for Fran? Oh, awesome, we have one up here. It's like I need my sunglasses. And please introduce yourself. Good morning. I'm Marisa Andrada. I'm the chief cultural officer at Wolf World, and I've worked at a lot of brand turnaround situations. And this is the HRO Chipotle, for example, Starbucks, and even Red Bull, and I'm listening to this brand turn around. So first of all, congratulations. I believe that the brand promise can only be true to the customer if the employees feel it on the inside. So I want to know, you know, your thoughts on what was the role of the employee and their voice and helping to reset the brand so that now it's cool again. I love your question because that actually was the key. The prior leadership to me believed in top down, and my opportunity was to really unleash this incredible, smart, optimistic, curious associate base that I encountered, and I listened to them. I mean, I'll give you a great example. One of my first buy meetings, an associate was showing us t-shirts for pride. And we were going through them and he said, you know, we're not allowed to sell these. We're just doing these for internal. And I was like, why would we not sell them? We're proud of this. This is all part of our, our value system here. And it was just like a moment for all of them to realize that life had changed, leadership had changed, and I was very open to listening bottoms up. Um, one of my favorite things to do, we have a beautiful campus is walk to the cafe for coffee, for lunch, talk to the associates, listen to them. They've led us to a lot of our philanthropic partnerships that we have. Which supports to your point, um, you know, the internal peace and the energy and excitement that's created from that. Yeah, uh, that speaks to, there was a really interesting Bloomberg story about what you and that strategy had in common with Barnes and Noble and that both of your turnarounds kind of depended on giving more of a voice to, in your case, merchants associates and Barnes and Noble's case, local booksellers who are running the stores and bringing more personality and of their own insight into that. Um. Uh, I think you know, your background is as a merchant. So a lot of retail CEOs, there's been a lot of conversation around whether that is the best background for retail. We've seen a lot of folks coming in more from a finance background. Do you think that you need to be a merchant to be a successful CEO in retail today? I think you have to love the customer. And I think that's really what it comes down to. So, I am a merchant at heart. I grew up, you know, mostly in the merchandizing world. I do have my MBA in finance, so I do have a bit of a balance between the right and the left brain for um my ability to be successful. So I think you have to love the customer and if you're a finance background, you can still love the customer, but that is keeping them at the center of everything you do is by far the most important thing to be successful. Uh, question up here from Bets Bay. I can't see. Hello there. Hello, uh, Betsy Bay Herman, head of research at Philips. Um, do you have any plans for smart textiles, so the technology for Abercrombie, uh, textiles and clothing in the future? Um, we don't have any plans at the moment, to be very candid, um, but the team is always listening and learning to what's out there. We have a, we manufacture in 17 countries around the world. We've got long standing partnerships out there, um, that we do use to help us develop innovative products and resources. So, um, nothing specific, but always listening and learning. Yeah, any other questions? OK, cool. Well, here's one for you. So, OK, you turned around a major brand very successfully. I imagine a lot of other companies might want you to do the same thing for them. So is there anything you want to do next? What would you say yes to? Um, I love what I'm doing. I consider myself incredibly lucky, um, to be where I am today and to have the experience of what I'm doing. Um, next for me is staying for this next chapter. You know, we've had 3 very specific chapters. We had to first stabilize, then we had to transform, and now we're in our growth stage, which we're approaching, you know, with some new thinking and It feels like day one for me, right? I mean, it's just now it's a whole new way to think about things. Throughout my career, reinventing businesses has been something I've been successful at. I'm excited for this growth phase. There's lots for me to learn and continue to drive at Abercrombie. So you're at day one of growth phase. Um, we start our growth days pretty much in the last, you know, 12 to 24 months, um, probably a little bit longer than that, but yes, but truly like how we're referencing this period is our, our growth stage. Um, talking about staying close to the customer and listening to them, Abercrombie has a really popular app, um, you know, compared to a lot of other retailers, it's very widely used and easy to use for consumers. What have you learned about customers from that data? So we have set up our, um, our digital team with. Odds and they are 24/7 reacting and listening to the customer behind the scenes. They're watching and seeing where there's opportunities where the customer gets stuck, where they can't move forward, where there's opportunities. Obviously AI is a big piece of that today. But the app is our most important ability to communicate with our customer, and we spend a lot of time and energy making sure to your point that it's continued to be updated and that it is as efficient as it is, and there's no finish line. I mean that's the thing, you know, it's just continuing. Yeah, what's something that you learned about your customer through the app that you might not have learned from patterns you would have seen in stores or online shopping? Um, I think what we've learned is that our most valuable customer through the app is someone who is an omnichannel customer, someone who can shop seamlessly between stores and, um, and digital, and a lot of that is demonstrated through the app. The discovery happens in the app, and then they choose, you know, where to complete the sales sometimes. Yeah. So you've really found the success by um appealing to what the millennial. wants the oldest millennials are now, you know, about 45. So what's next as they continue to grow up? Well, that's what I was going to say. So we certainly, we used to say a young millennial brand, and you're absolutely right because the the Zs are now 26 and 27, and they are very much a part of our consumer base, and they are very different shoppers than the millennials are. The most important thing to keep a brand successful though is not to chase your customers they get. Older, you have to make sure that you stay focused for your design team, your merchant team on who the customer is, and that's what we expect to do. If the customer wants to stay with us well into their 40s and 50s, we are delighted to have them stay with us, but the design, the marketing, and everything has to stay focused on the key point of who we want to be. Thank you so much, Fran. Thank you. Thanks, everybody. Thanks Emma.