👖A reseller on Netflix “White Hot: The Rise & Fall of Abercrombie & Fitch”

 

Abercrombie & Fitch Flowered Sweatshirt pictured here. 

Spoiler alert.  This is not a review.

Thoroughly enjoyed this informative doc which is front and center about A&F as a cultural phenomenon and not about the clothes. Some of the memorable one liners:  “The clothes themselves were nothing special.” “The staff was horrendous.”  “My team called it 13^th grade.” “The very last thing it’s selling is actual(ly) garments.” “The goal is not to give people what they’re asking for.” “Everything I didn’t like about high school and put… in a store.” Besides, “It didn’t matter what the sales were.”

The A&F ethos having been, in the past, I mean, what’s the point of being part of a club if you can’t exclude people? Can a mediocre clothing company, with some smoke and mirrors, earn  enormous valuations? Yeah, it can. Can this same methodology work circa 2022? Yeah, it can. With “85 percent mark-up on a t-shirt” anything is possible.

Retail founders’ “Rise and Fall” stories, with their various permutations, are fascinating and often tend to go:  rise, rise, go public (or tries to), rise a little more, fall, fall, went bankrupt, license was purchased, maybe rise again under new ownership or management.  Nasty Gal, Juicy Couture are also interesting stories. There are many others.

As for Abercrombie, they’re still up and running under new management, some of their newer items are popular at resale and there’s probably a resurgence in the popularity of their old stuff with the Y2K fashion trend. More optimistically, some consumers are more aware now. Fashion companies, more data driven, should be able to bring sustainable practices to scale with better quality and lower prices. The burgeoning cashmere sweater companies online serve as an example of this and are a story for another blog post.