As Abercrombie & Fitch attempts to revitalize its company and spark customer engagement, focusing on a customer-centric approach has been, and continues to be, its No. 1 objective.
“The past quarter, our company continued to take major strides to revitalize our brands, enhance performance, and position ourselves to resume a solid growth trajectory,” Arthur C. Martinez, Abercrombie & Fitch’s Executive Chairman, said during the company’s May 28 first-quarter earnings conference call, according to Seeking Alpha. “We’ve made significant changes in every aspect of our business, including augmenting our leadership team, enhancing organizational strength and efficiency, developing merchandising and design processes, and optimizing our store fleet by adding stores in high potential markets and continuing to close underperforming stores. We’ve also made important investments in high potential areas, including the online business. Importantly, we have focused the entire organization on putting the customer at the center of everything we do, particularly with regard to the store experience and our merchandise assortments.”
Martinez said the company’s first-quarter numbers don’t “reflect the many initiatives underway to reinvigorate our iconic brands. But we do see traction in several areas.”
Jonathan E. Ramsden, Chief Operating Officer & Executive Vice President for Abercrombie & Fitch, stressed the company’s customer-centric approach.
“First and foremost, putting the customer at the center of everything that we do,” he said. “Second, defining a clear positioning for our brands in a rapidly changing and highly competitive marketplace. Third, ensuring we are delivering a compelling and differentiated assortment. Fourth, from a channel standpoint, ensuring we are appropriately scaled and positioned to optimize our brand reach domestically and internationally. Fifth, ensuring we continue to improve our efficiency, pare underperforming assets, and reduce expense. And last, ensuring we are organized to succeed.”
Abercrmobie & Fitch made significant changes in its stores during the first quarter to create a faster, easier, and more enjoyable shopping experience.
“We have given our store managers greater autonomy, but also increased their accountability by implementing a new incentive program,” Ramsden explained. “Regarding omnichannel, we have enabled order in store in all U.S. stores and will have ship from store in place in approximately 70% of U.S. stores by the end of Q2. We will extend ship from store to the UK and Canada by the end of the year, in addition we will have click and collect in place by the end of the year in the UK, a market where this is very important, and we'll begin to enable online returns to stores in Europe, again starting with the UK. All of these changes are directed towards creating an easy, seamless, and satisfying experience for our customers.”