Abercrombie & Fitch is making a comeback from a picture disaster and extended gross sales stoop underneath CEO Fran Horowitz. The key method is listening to clients. Workers on the retailer recurrently accompany buyers to soccer video games, drinks and even weekend journeys to cities like Nashville in an effort to collect firsthand information on what their clientele is taken with. “We speak quite a bit on this business about being near the client, however you actually must do it. My staff does it higher than most,” Horowitz mentioned whereas talking at NRF 2026: Retail’s Huge Present in the present day (Jan. 12) in New York.
Horowitz joined Abercrombie & Fitch in 2014 as president of the Hollister model and has served as CEO for 9 years. Her tenure has been outlined by a pointy reversal of fortune for the once-dominant mall model, whose gross sales plunged within the 2010s after years of recognition constructed round heavy logos and shirtless male fashions.
Beneath her management, nevertheless, Abercrombie & Fitch’s inventory has soared by 333 p.c up to now 5 years. That momentum continues to develop. The corporate’s most up-to-date earnings report marked three consecutive years of quarterly gross sales development, with income for the August-October interval rising by 7 p.c year-over-year to $1.3 billion.
One among Horowitz’s first main strikes was to obviously differentiate Abercrombie & Fitch from its subsidiary, Hollister. The CEO believed the 2 manufacturers had blurred into one. “They actually had turn out to be type of one, simply in two totally different shops with totally different worth factors and totally different labels,” mentioned Horowitz.
To differentiate the 2 manufacturers, Horowitz repositioned Hollister squarely towards youngsters whereas ageing up Abercrombie & Fitch to concentrate on Millennials. The pivot helped the corporate’s workers higher perceive and, subsequently, goal the customers of every model. “It was truthfully a 180-degree flip,” mentioned the CEO.
Serving clients doesn’t imply telling them what they need, however listening carefully to what they are saying. Usually, she famous, the options are simple. She pointed to the corporate’s resolution so as to add zippers to its denims, which had as soon as been dominated by button-flies, after repeated buyer suggestions. For the reason that change, the model has seen “document gross sales” in denim, in keeping with the CEO.
There’s no clear endpoint to Horowitz’s turnaround. Trying forward, she plans to undertake A.I.-powered productiveness instruments and additional develop Abercrombie & Fitch’s world enterprise. Worldwide markets at the moment account for about 20 p.c of the enterprise, a determine the corporate goals to develop by investing additional in London and Shanghai.
“What I like probably the most about this business is that it simply continues to evolve and evolve over time,” mentioned Horowitz. “Retail is a journey—there isn’t any end line.”
