THE PROBLEM WITH ABERCROMBIE & FITCH
Is it unethical to be exclusionary?
The fashion industry is always evolving, and while it can be challenging to forecast these changes, it is much harder to learn how to adapt to them. Abercrombie and Fitch is the ideal illustration of a well-known fashion company that achieved success thanks to a very distinct brand image but ultimately failed because of this very business model. The well-known retailer achieved success in the early 1990s by using niche, or borderline exclusionary, marketing to target a particular market segment that they believed was worthy of representing the A&F brand. However, the brand entered a downhill spiral after the company was repeatedly accused of discriminatory behavior all throughout the 2000s. It became clear through studying the history of the Abercrombie and Fitch brand that the rigorous rules imposed by the company's former CEO, Michael Jeffries, caused the brand to become too exclusive for its own good and fall behind the times.
Early 2000s Abercrombie & Fitch models
David T. Abercrombie established Abercrombie Co. in 1898 in Manhattan, New York, with the primary goal of catering to the wealthy elite class of New York by selling high-end outdoor gear and clothing. Ezra Fitch, a devoted customer of the company, was introduced to David Abercrombie in 1904, and the two soon became partners in the business, giving it its current name, Abercrombie & Fitch, or A&F. The company struggled through the 1970s as revenues started to fall, and in 1976 it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as a result. However, L Brands, which also owns mall brands like Bath & Body Works and Victoria's Secret, purchased the business in 1988. Through this acquisition, A&F changed its focus from selling American sportswear to that all-American preppy, cool-kid look that we now all associate the company with.
Original Abercrombie & Fitch catalog from the early 1900s
Michael Jeffries, who took over as the company's new CEO in the 1990s, helped transform the brand into what it is today. He developed the coveted cool kid aesthetic and image that first brought in billions of dollars for the company but also landed it in hot water due to A&F's discriminatory messaging. The brand was noticeably utilizing and hiring primarily white people, who fit into very conventional beauty standards and its clothing selection also seemed to follow this exclusionary path as it was offered in very limited sizing options. It was obvious that the “cool kid” Jeffries was trying to sell to through A&F was only conventionally attractive, white kids. In the nineties, the brand garnered $4.5 billion dollars in sales at its peak. A&F has three subsidiary stores globally which each target a different target market: Abercrombie targets middle school kids between the ages of twelve and fourteen; Hollister Co. targets high school students between the ages of fifteen and eighteen; and lastly, Abercrombie & Fitch targets college students between the ages of nineteen to twenty-two years old. Today, the brand operates more than 1,000 stores globally and the number of Abercrombie & Fitch store employees has seemed to decrease globally from over 100,000 people to approximately 31,500 as of 2022.
Early 2000s Abercrombie & Fitch ad
Michael Jeffries had a reputation for getting things done. He was particularly concerned with how Abercrombie and Fitch was viewed by the general public and was very specific about the image he wanted to project of the company. Due to his powerful and aggressive personality in his specific convictions about the brand and his keen awareness of how he was portraying the brand in its exclusionary messaging, he might be classified as being highly intimidating. He reveled in this perception, as he stated in an interview for the Salon “In every school, there are the cool and popular kids and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids.”. In 2006, Michael Jeffries, a man notorious for avoiding interviews, allowed writer and journalist, Beniot Denizet-Lewis, into the giant campus like A&F Headquarters in Ohio. Denizet-Lewis characterized Jeffries as an elderly guy trapped in the idealized world of a college student as he only wore clothes from Abercrombie and Fitch and insisted that everyone else on the A&F campus do the same. Employees at the company described Jeffries as motivated, demanding, clever, intense, obsessive-compulsive, quirky, flamboyant, and, depending on who you spoke to, either slightly or very odd when Denizet-Lewis asked them to describe him. A former employee of his, Paul Harris described Jeffries as “weird and probably insane, but he's also unbelievably driven and brilliant". Overall, while many of Jeffries employees and other onlookers of the brand found the infamous CEO a little excessive in his tactics, no one could doubt that his craziness revived Abercrombie and Fitch from its ashes.
Micheal Jeffries early on in his A&F career
An overall consensus about Jeffries was that he was a control freak when it came to the Abercrombie & Fitch brand image. When he walked into a room, he expected his employees to act how he perceived the Abercrombie and Fitch brand: calm, cool, and collected. Some employees have described Jeffries as “touchy-feely”, however, in more of a paternalistic manner rather than sexual. One of the biggest scandals Abercombie and Fitch have found itself in over the years was the EEOC v Abercrombie and Fitch Stores in 2015 when a Muslim woman, Samantha Elauf, was denied a position at one of the brand’s retail establishments due to her hijab. The company stated that “the head scarf clashed with its dress code, which called for a classic East Coast collegiate style”. The supreme court ruled in favor of Ealuf, 8-1, and she was awarded $20,000. This specific case united multiple religious advocacy groups of all different religions who filed friend-of-the-court briefs siding with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. This lawsuit, and many others regarding similar discriminatory actions and physical attributes on part of Abercrombie and Fitch, have since left a sour taste in many consumers' minds about the brand's values, ethics, and morals. Overall, lawsuits like the EEOC v A&F Inc, very specified and underlying discriminatory marketing tactics, and Jeffries's crazy obsession over his specific view of the brand have now left the brand as enemy number one in the retail space to any consumer who does not contend to Jeffries version of attractiveness.
Samantha Elauf (middle) leaving the Supreme Court in 2015, after winning the EEOC v. A&F case
The overall consensus of the Abercrombie and Fitch brand came to be that it was simply just exclusionary. The brand catered to a specific niche group of people, mostly consisting of young, fit, white young people. While this “young, All American attractive” image may have helped the brand gain traction in the early 90s, the 2000s brought an all-new set of social standards to the retail space: diversity and inclusion. A&F lacked these qualities, catering to a mostly white audience, providing minimal sizing options, and only associating with people who they deemed cool enough to represent the brand. The early 2000s, which also signaled the start of a new decade, saw the emergence of animosity and frustration with the brand. I believe this should have served as a warning to Jeffries and the A&F team that new trends as well as a new consumer and retail mindset were on the horizon. This is fairly typical and well-known within the fashion industry, since each new decade ushers in fresh fashion trends and an all-new aesthetic that is mostly influenced by the current cultural climate. The emergence of optimism from despair was the zeitgeist of the 2000s. Since the world was only moving forward in terms of technology, ideology, and everything in between, this meant advancement in terms of fashion. This drive for progression also sparked an increase in body positivity campaigns and a desire for diversity among customers of the products they were consuming. In my opinion, Jeffries should have changed his perspective and expanded the range of sizes offered by the Abercrombie and Fitch brand. Although the brand's exclusivity may have had an effect on the niche clientele it was targeting, a significantly bigger portion of the market still went unexplored. Since this was a brand that was largely distributed in malls, the customers who were shopping there were frequently outside the boundaries of the A&F brand's target market. The firm would have been able to thrive more in the areas they were in if it had done the bare minimum and added greater size diversity within its clothing selection. This would have made the clothing of the brand accessible to a wider audience, while still catering to its previous target market, and would show that Abercrombie and Fitch was a brand that listened to the concerns of its consumers. I can understand why Jeffries would want to continue his exclusionary and specified business model, as it is what brought the brand to success in the first place, however, I think he failed to realize that fashion changes constantly. His status quo began to grow outdated and he was not willing to grow and expand the brand. As I mentioned earlier, exclusion was growing tiring and old and inclusivity was becoming more desired. This is how numerous fashion brands and companies failed or have fallen in the past, they were not willing to adapt. So while Jeffries may have believed he was justified in sticking with the status quo of his brand, sales, lawsuits, and consumers feedback should have told him otherwise, as at the end of the day as a retail brand, its main goal is to sell and cater to consumers wants and needs.
Abercrombie & Fitch’s exclusionary advertising
Dissimilar to A&F's marketing strategies, niche marketing can be carried out in a way that isn't inherently exclusive or even remotely discriminating. So why I don’t think there is much wrong with target and niche marketing, I think there are some ethical problems with Abercrombie and Fitch’s approach to it. One of the major ethical challenges of A&F’s niche marketing strategy is that it does not allow the brand to grow, expand, or adapt. By partaking in such exclusionary marketing, the brand has put itself in a box, with no room to progress. This suggests that the brand has not thought long-term about its retail strategy. Essentially, the brand was only catering to conventionally attractive straight white youths. This is unethical in terms of racial and physical discrimination because it sent the message that Abercrombie and Fitch only believed certain people to be attractive, cool, and worthy of wearing the brand. An individual was viewed as a loser by society if they did not conform to the brand's narrow definition of attractiveness. Another ethical dilemma of niche marketing regarding Abercrombie and Fitch is the dedication of the brand to its consumers. By the A&F team trying to justify the brand's discriminatory acts, it portrays how they constantly fail to take responsibility for their actions and lack in being transparent to their consumers. This also makes the brand feel more like it is built more for the likes of Jeffries and not the people the actual clothing is being sold to.
Early 2000s Abercrombie & Fitch ad that lacked diversity
Another facet Abercrombie & Fitch overlooked—or perhaps simply refused to acknowledge—is the fact that the specific white, fit, twenty-somethings it portrayed as its target demographic were not the ones who were actually purchasing the goods. The brand attracted a younger adolescent audience because it was largely offered in malls and frequently compared with well-known tween and teen-targeted retailers like Aeropostale and American Eagle. Although I don't believe that companies necessarily have the primary responsibility for preserving and promoting good body image concerns, I do believe that doing so would be the morally correct thing to do as well as advantageous for the firm as a whole from a social and economic standpoint. Teenagers and tweens are particularly susceptible to influence, so even the tiniest things have the power to boost or undermine their self-esteem. When a well-known brand does not accept them or does not have clothes that fit them, it affects how they feel about themselves and how they appear. Anybody is more likely to make another purchase from a company if they feel good about themselves after leaving the store. In my opinion, fashion retailers and firms have a moral obligation to work to uplift their customers rather than undermine them and cause them to second-guess themselves. All environments that children and teenagers interact with should want to assist them in understanding that it's good to be who they are and look how they look in a society where physical appearance is so valued. The discriminatory and exclusive message that Jeffries conveyed through Abercrombie and Fitch served as an example for today's social media users to engage in similar and frequently worse messages. Today, a majority of kids use social media, and I contend that the posts, tweets, and videos they see there have the greatest influence on them. Therefore, while I think social media’s influence and expected societal responsibility on contributing to teen’s body image is higher than that of fashion companies or what Jeffries did with A&F, I think fashion brands paved the way for influencing teen body image and also have a high influence and following from and on teenagers on social media.
Teen customers posing with early Abercrombie & Fitch model
In comparison to prior years, Abercrombie and Fitch has made significant modifications to its product line-up, culture, and general image. In comparison to its previous "All American, Cali cool kid" image, the brand's image and the products it offers are significantly more sophisticated and refined. Current A&F goods can be characterized as elegant, straightforward, and contemporary. Fran Horowitz has been the company's CEO since she assumed the position in 2017. All of the other executive officers appear to be recent hires as well, having joined the organization as early as 2017 and as recently as 2021. This suggests that following the 2015 lawsuit, A&F made the decision to rebrand, which included revamping the company's top executives. The brand's culture is now considerably more open and diverse, offering sizes up to 3xl in its clothing, as well as a wider range of models in its advertising, including more people of color, people of different sizes, and people of various sexual orientations. Since more women and people of color are now in positions of power inside A&F, the company's culture appears to be a little bit more diversified as well. The current mission statement of Abercrombie and Fitch is “to inspire our global customers to feel confident, be comfortable and face their Fierce”. This statement is a big transition from what the brand’s old CEO Michael Jeffries stated A&F was for, which was to 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”. The retail storefronts have also undergone a massive change from when they were under Jeffries's reign, as current A&F stores are much brighter and lighter aesthetic-wise, don’t fully consume people in its fragrances when one walks in, and include much more diverse images of people in their clothing. The store has completely ditched its dark, club-like aesthetic. Overall, Abercrombie and Fitch were too stuck in its old ways; the brand was not willing to evolve and adapt to the ever-changing fashion industry. When the trickle-up theory, which is about consumers influencing what companies sell, gained greater traction in the 2000s, the company was still working to uphold the principles of the trickle-down theory, which focused on brands influencing consumers' choices over what to wear. While the brand seems to be going steady currently, it will forever be marked by its controversial past.
