The changes at Abercrombie & Fitch business strategy that improved company’s productivity Essay

Abercrombie & Fitch (A&F) was founded in 1982 by David Abercrombie and Ezra Fitch in New York City (1). Mike Jeffries was the CEO for 22 years, until he resigned in 2014 following eleven consecutive quarters of sales declining thus, A&F is being overseen by Arthur Martinez, Jonathon Ramsden, and Fran Horowitz (2). Abercrombie & Fitch currently has 62,150 employees (1). A&F is a retail store T-shirts, shorts, denim jeans, shoes and accessories. Their style was more of a basic and casual look. They have a store called Abercrombie kids, which sells exclusively to boys and girls. They also have another store called Abercrombie & Fitch, which sells to women and men. They market towards young children to young adults, but are now targeting more towards the 18-22 age group (1).
Abercrombie & Fitch is best known for their basic T-shirts with their logo placed across the chest and the denim jeans. They are also known for their marketing being very sexual with men and women showing more skin in advertisement. At all locations they had male models in the entrance of the store showing their chests and stomachs, but have recently removed all models from all locations. Abercrombie & Fitch went through a tough time trying to compete with other businesses in the same marketplace (3). After carefully analyzing their business, they decided change was necessary, in order to continue their success in the retail business. They would exclude certain customers for not having the "American look." For example, the stores did not carry any size larger then XL and no size over ten in the denim jeans department. Recently, A&F have recreated their style to welcome all customers. This past fall they created a look embracing everyone no matter what size, shape or color (3). They also incorporated more fashion forward clothing, rather than the basic T-shit with a blue denim jean.
Abercrombie & Fitch encourage employees to embrace their differences and they provide a workplace where it is highly accepted. According to the A&F Corporate Responsibility Report, it states "Making the work environment a wonderful place, not only for our employees but for our customers as well (4.)" They are devoted to keep a positive shopping environment through all their stores, domestically and internationally. Abercrombie & Fitch have a partnership with the ILO and IFC, which brings local businesses, international buyers and workers' and employers' organizations to sustain and improve labor standards. Not only does A&F provide a good workplace for their employees, but they also have the same standards for the vendors. Abercrombie & Fitch make sure the vendors provide a safe working environment and that they are up to standards. They do not tolerate child labor, harassment, and discrimination within their stores and within the supply chain. According to the A&F Cares website it states, "to ensure our factories are fulfilling their obligation, we hire independent, third party monitoring firms to audit them (4)." The audits are done randomly and are usually held once or more each year.