How Abercrombie Unlocked a Bigger and Brighter Future

This article was published in Rivet’s winter issue. Click here to read more.

Denim Riding Momentum as Back-to-School Season Approaches

Abercrombie & Fitch has undergone a significant transformation over the past several years. The former teen retailer has shifted its focus to an older customer, targeting women and men in their mid-20s and up, but the denim category remains a mainstay of the company. Although there are fewer stores today than at the peak—the company has closed some 130 units, accounting for around 1 million square feet, since the pandemic—the fleet is still substantial, numbering some 200 worldwide.

Here, Corey Robinson, chief product officer for Abercrombie brands, who oversees adult, kids and activewear for the company, provides a peek behind the curtain at what’s working and the opportunities for growth in the future.

Rivet: How long have you been with Abercrombie & Fitch?

Corey Robinson: I’ve been with the company for 17 years and I’ve had several roles, but five years ago they asked me to come over to the Abercrombie brand. I was previously at Hollister, and that’s when we started the whole rebrand.

Rivet: Have you always been in product development?

CR: I started my career in merchandising, and I now oversee merchandising and design.

Rivet: Since you moved into this role, how has the denim category evolved?

CR: The denim category has evolved drastically. When I came over in 2018, denim was an important category for the business, and we have gained a lot of momentum since. In fact, it’s even more important today. I would say the biggest thing we did back then is we really focused on getting close to the customer to find out what they wanted from us in jeans. That’s when we [created] Curve Love, which is now 50 percent of our women’s jeans business. We offer it in all our denim fits. And that really started what I would say is the major momentum that we’ve had ever since.

Rivet: How would you describe Curve Love?

CR: Basically, Curve Love gets rid of the waist gap. It’s for someone who has more of an hourglass figure and could never get the right ratio of hips to waist. I’ll tell you an interesting story that I think speaks to how close we get to the customer. Our head denim designer at the time spent hours scouring YouTube and going through shopping malls. What she found was that lots of women were talking about the waist gap, and they could never find jeans that fit their waist and their hips. She said, ‘this is a problem we can solve.’ So that was really the genesis of Curve Love. Now we offer Curve Love as an option in every single denim fit that we have.

Rivet: Beyond Curve Love, what are the other popular denim items you offer?

CR: We also introduced an athletic fit in men’s. The problem we were solving there was for larger thighs—and that has also gained momentum. Another thing is size. Starting back in 2019, we began to offer a wider size range within our women’s denim, from sizes 23-37.

As we’ve gotten closer to the customer, we also learned that extended sizes are more than just about waist. It’s about all the nuances to one’s body and how we needed to offer differences so jeans fit. Length was a big topic from our customers. So, we now offer short and long, and in select stores, we also have extra-short and extra-long per the request of the customer. That has allowed us to fit a lot more bodies and be much more inclusive with our denim.

Rivet: Abercrombie is now targeting an older consumer. How does that impact what you offer since it’s not for teenagers anymore?

CR: Our core customer is 22 to 29, and we use 25 as our filter. The important thing to this customer is she or he wants jeans to be versatile. They want to be able to wear them to work and they also want to be able to wear them to happy hour. So, you’ll see there’s a lot less destroyed or ripped jeans in our assortment than there used to be because that’s more relevant to our customer. And in terms of the fits, there are some that are casual, but others feel more work appropriate . Having that balance is important to us.

Rivet: How have you changed the merchandising in the stores to highlight the new fits and sizing?

CR: It depends on the store, what kind of space we have and how important denim is in that store. But in stores where we have the best denim experience, we do a combination of both walls and tables. What we try to create is a denim destination. That’s how the customer likes to shop. What’s important is we have one section that is for classic and one for Curve Love . So, if a customer is a Curve Love customer, they know they’re on the left and can see all the options we have. That’s how we’re trying to facilitate the shopping experience.

Rivet: How do you handle complementary product?

CR: One of the fun things about denim is, as we understand what is changing in denim shapes, it really impacts the rest of her outfit. It impacts what top she’s wearing; it impacts the outerwear. As we’re seeing some of these wider fits happen, we’re seeing shorter outerwear become more important—and second layers in general. The other thing I would say is we’re always watching footwear trends, because what’s happening in shoes affects the leg shapes in denim. So that is all complementary. And those proportions are something we’re always thinking about from a design perspective. It’s more complicated than people would imagine.

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Rivet: Have you had some styles that fell flat or didn’t work for the customer? And how do you handle that?

CR: We’ve had a lot of momentum in our denim business for the last few years. What really did not work for us though is when we were in a very tight size range with a very small number of fit offerings. We weren’t inclusive enough. We were also expecting so many sales to come from a couple of fits. But what we said is if that if we were going to really become a leader in denim, we need to fit a lot of bodies.

You’ll hear me talk about all day long about how wider fits are trending, but slimmer fits are still important to the business, because there’s an end use for that too and someone might need multiple fits in their closet.

Rivet: And what about the color palette?

CR: One of the trends we’ve been seeing lately is actually non-indigo denim. We’ve been seeing ecrus and whites and blacks, and with some of this garment-dyed denim, we’re also getting levels of olive and khaki and brown that our customers, both male and female, have really responded to.

Rivet: Back-to-school has historically been a monster season for retailers who carry denim. But because your customer is now older, where does back-to-school fit into the picture?

CR: Our customer is not shopping for back-to-school , so it doesn’t really have an impact on our business. However, as the seasons change, they are shopping for fall-appropriate work attire. They also come to us for the fall trends they want to wear in the evenings and on the weekends. So, we still do get those peaks as the seasons change, just for different reasons.

Rivet: What is your marketing strategy? How do you get the message out to customers?

CR: We have a nice presence on social media, both through Instagram and TikTok. And we have a lot of people who are fans of the brand who like to talk about our jeans especially. And what has been an important part of our rebrand is we have a lot of affiliates on Instagram and TikTok that actually tell why they either fell in love with Abercrombie for the first time or have re-fallen in love with Abercrombie and how we’ve changed as an organization and how the product has evolved so much. The customer is hearing that from them, as opposed to having to having to take our word for it.

Rivet: How do you capitalize on that? Do you solicit people, or do they approach you?

CR: We have an affiliate program where we work with LTK, but also, if you follow the hashtag #Abercrombie on TikTok, there’s a lot of organic talk. While we do have our own marketing presence, it’s wonderful to see all of this organic love for the brand.

Rivet: You also oversee the kids category. What are the trends there?

CR: Denim in the kids’ business is very important. We are known for denim and kids—we are definitely an authority there. And it’s an especially important business for our girl. There are different needs for these customers. Having really soft denim versus authentic, rigid denim is something that’s different with kids. An adult customer really appreciates the quality of a rigid denim. The other thing in kids’ is that novelty is so important. Our girl loves the wide-leg jeans, she loves it with embroidery, she loves it with utility details. She loves it with a railroad stripe, or with sparkle.

Rivet: What about boys—are they more conservative?

CR: Jeans are very important but boys don’t like hard pants so we really focus on qualities that are very soft so mom can get him into the jeans.

Rivet: You got into the active business recently. How has that been working?

CR: We launched YPB [Your Personal Best] in the spring of ’22. And that really came from customer requests and insights. In stores, we basically had leggings, but they were more like loungewear. Customers said they loved the product, but it didn’t perform if they used it for a workout.  They were looking for real performance from us. We also looked at search terms online and every single week, active was at one of the top search items, but garnered no results. So, we said, let’s go after this.

We launched in in February of 2022 and it has exceeded our expectations. We’re really excited about the future as YPB continues to grow at a great rate. And there are no jeans in there, it’s all active and active-adjacent product. Earlier this year, we opened our very first YPB store on Newbury Street in Boston, which has been really exciting.

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