Word: branded
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...across the country. Then there's Abercrombie & Fitch. The upscale teen retailer has suffered 10 straight months of double-digit same-store-sales declines. In the second quarter of 2009 alone, sales were down an eye-popping 30% across the company's three name outlets: the flagship Abercrombie brand, which has 567 stores; Hollister, a 520-store teen chain; and Ruehl, a 29-store chain for young adults that Abercrombie shut down in June. Abercrombie & Fitch lost $26.7 million, which includes $24.4 million in charges associated with the closing of Ruehl, in the second quarter. During the same period...
...What lessons can be learned from the Abercrombie experience? The first has to do with pricing. As the economy spiraled downward and competitors like Aéropostale started discounting like crazy, Abercrombie refused to lower prices. The company insisted that price-cutting would cheapen the cachet of the brand...
...Abercrombie is having other problems. "They were the quintessential American prep brand, but the world changed on them," says Edward Yruma, an equity research analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets. "We're living in the Gossip Girl era, where we're seeing some funkier fashions." Abercrombie's classic look went out of style, and the company is just starting to sell dresses, which have performed well. "I've noticed that my kids aren't open to anything Abercrombie these days," says one mother of two teenage girls...
...grant he secured from British Petroleum - and spearheaded a major project to investigate solar energy. "Steve is a visionary, and he really galvanized the lab with his vision," says Paul Alivisatos, who was Chu's deputy there. But some scientists bristled at Chu's demand for dramatic scientific breakthroughs - brand-new ways to store energy, sequester carbon or fuel cars - as opposed to incremental engineering improvements. "Chu likes flashy, sexy technological fixes that attract a lot of attention. He gets bored when they aren't nano-this or bio-that," says University of Texas engineering professor Tad Patzek, who left...
...about the fit, not the brand. Find a campus where you can challenge yourself. College-admissions offices value real intellectual curiosity. There are so many students who have extraordinary grades, and yet they have no clue how to find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map. What happened to the thirst for knowledge for knowledge's sake? [{I think}] we're beating it out of kids in this race to look good for admissions committees...