Abercrombie & Fitch

Monday 26th of May 2008 01:07:23 PM

Abercrombie & Fitch, a leading teen clothing shop will be opening more stores in the United Kingdom this year. In a year of little gains among many publicly traded retailers, last week Abercrombie & Fitch topped Wall Street estimates and the company reporting higher quarterly earnings than expected despite lower same store sales. This first quarter net income was up 2 million dollars from $60.1 million dollars in this period last year to $62.1 million dollars this year. The higher profit was due, in part, to the success of the retailer’s first shops in the UK. During their first year in business in the UK, Abercrombie & Fitch competed with more established brands and its central London flagship store brought in almost 50 million U.S. dollars.

The chain makes a good portion of its multi mullion dollar profits off of the sale of T-Shirts and jeans to teenagers. Its first market outside of North America was in the United Kingdom. It plans to open 4 more stores in the United Kingdom during 2008. As Americans continue to suffer from the housing crisis and rising fuel prices, Abercrombie & Fitch seeks to expand its stores across more European countries and to enter the Asian market as well. While Abercrombie & Fitch currently makes about 13 percent of its revenue outside of the United States, the company anticipates that in the next 7 – 10 years it will receive about half of its revenue from countries other than the United States.

In addition to expansion in Europe and Asia, the company will likely look for new trends and fashions for teen girls as means of business expansion. According to Roxanne Meyer, a retail analyst with Oppenheimer & Co, shops such as Abercrombie & Fitch have suffered from lack of new fashion trends.

So, be on the lookout for both new stores and new T-Shirts from Abercrombie in the near future.