Sister brands Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister were the go-to shops for teens in early 2000s. But as Abercrombie cultivated its rebellious image with half-naked models, controversies piled up, and its popularity fell.
"We are a very different company than we used to be," Fran Horowitz, who was named CEO in 2017, said in an interview. "We are a much more inclusive company, we are closer to the customer, we're responding to the customer wants and not what we want them to want." Already half of all Hollister stores and 10% of Abercrombie's stores have been remodeled. Its supply chain is better able to respond to shifts in shopper tastes and its loyalty program now has 30 million members, up from 14 million in the year prior. The company began allowing Abercrombie and Hollister customers to pay with Venmo in August 2018, and the brands recently started offering checkout on Instagram — all in the name of making it easier for customers to shop its stores.