The madness behind Abercrombie and Fitch Options

[Mireh]

So obviously people in this forum have drastically different views on the company Abercrombie and Fitch. We have ardent followers that shop religiously and exclusively at AF/HCO/AKids. And then we have people who are totally against it and despise it.

So. Why is abercrombie and fitch so controversial?

I read this article a while back (it's quite old actually, 2005) and stumbled across it again. It's quite interesting (well, at least I think soo..).

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2006/01/2...s/index_np.html

Some quotes, for all of you too lazy to read the article

Jeffries never lost sight of who his customer is, and he created a quality brand that caters to the cool clique and has a sense of exclusivity, yet it still has a mass appeal, because people want to be a part of it. It's genius."

For example, when I ask him how important sex and sexual attraction are in what he calls the "emotional experience" he creates for his customers, he says, "It's almost everything. That's why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don't market to anyone other than that."

As far as Jeffries is concerned, America's unattractive, overweight or otherwise undesirable teens can shop elsewhere. "In every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids," he says. "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."

As for me? I think it's absolute genius how Jeffries was able to turn such a dusty outdated company back around. From a business/marketing perspective its brilliant, but does that give them the right to degrade and isolate others in attempts to maintain their "cool" image?


Discuss, debate, conglomerate

[HakunaMatata]

^I don't think Hot Topic is doing it in a "Hey, all the people that don't wear our clothes are totally ugly!" kind of way, though.

It's perfectly fine to have a focus. All good stores do. But there's a line. Someone brought up the example of magazines focusing on one group of people to advertise to and serve, but as with the Hot Topic example, they're not insulting to the "outsiders". I find it repulsive that the owner thinks that way of "fat" people". It's not, perhaps, the fact that they cater to skinny people that I find insulting, it's the fact that the owner blatantly insults the people who aren't.

I know quite a few people who own shirts from Forever 21 that are copycats of shirts from A&F or Hollister and they're totally against shopping at A&F. I mean, why would you buy something that looks almost exactly the same if you absolutely hate the real thing?

When did A&F become "the real thing"? I never knew that it had reached such high levels to be considered as so. I buy things from Forever 21 that may look very similar to A&F and I would never buy it from A&F. Why? The price. A&F and Hollister can have the exact same thing as the Target near my house with a logo slapped on it and suddenly, the price doubles.




....and that's my spiel on A&F. Hm. Meaner than I thought it'd be. I think it's the Forever 21 thing. And the no sleep thing. And the Forever 21 thing. And the no sleep thing.