dELiA*s has filed for bankruptcy. Abercrombie & Fitch/Hollister is in trouble.

[randomness]

A comment thread about Zara in rednikki's LJ reminded me that I'd been putting together a post about fast fashion chains like H&M and Forever 21 pushing specialty teen clothing retailers out of business.

From The New York Times' Dealbook blog:

Unable to find a buyer or arrange a financial lifeline, Delia’s said on Friday that it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and seek to close all its stores and distribution centers. The company said it would aim to run going-out-of-business sales.

...

On Friday, Delia’s warned its shareholders that it “does not anticipate any value will remain from the bankruptcy estate.”

From The Wall Street Journal:

Delia’s news followed the bankruptcy filing Thursday by Deb Shops, whose 300 stores also were booming in the 1990s.

“When there’s one of these guys that’s kind of sick, it tends to infect all these guys,” Paul Lejuez, a Wells Fargo Securities analyst, said of the hypercompetitive environment teen retail environment.

From MarketWatch:

Teen retailers like Delia’s have struggled to compete with fast fashion players like H&M and pure online retailers that cater to millennial shoppers who increasingly do all their buying on the Web.

And from Business Insider:

But Eric Beder, specialty apparel analyst at Wunderlich Securities, said he believes Abercrombie is running out of options.

"What is going to turn the tide?" Beder asked in a note to clients. "Frankly, we have no idea."

Beder notes that Abercrombie has already exhausted numerous turnaround strategies, to no avail.

"Abercrombie has already aggressively closed domestic locations, cut back on inventories, shifted away from logo products, and cut costs," Beder writes.

The once-leading teen retailer has struggled to stay relevant since the surge in demand for fast-fashion brands like Forever 21 and H&M.

One of my fraternity siblings in Manhattan has a roommate who's in the industry and claims that "everything is fast fashion now". My friend and I agree this is hyperbole but there is clearly a sense in which fast fashion is setting the pace.

It's just a thought, but an overdose of fast fashion may be one driver behind the rise of vintage.

Comments

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Different vendors. These were all Aus-local vendors - although I was told that several brands that exist in the US went up to size 16 in Aus where they do not in the US.

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

The Australian-local vendors keeping larger sizes in stock makes sense. They know their market.

I just hope that the global brands which do carry larger sizes in Australia figure out that they should carry them in other countries, too.

[rednikki.livejournal.com]

Honestly? There are probably a higher percentage of size 16s in the US. But companies give a million excuses for not wanting to sell to them. Designers are pretty firm with the people they partner with, too - the Isabel Marant collaboration at H&M (http://www.thegloss.com/2013/10/07/fashion/hm-collaborations-are-only-for-skinny-people/) only goes to a size 12, and Lagerfeld famously threw a fit when H&M produced his collaboration up to size 16, saying they were meant only for skinny people (http://www.vogue.co.uk/news/2004/11/18/lagerfelds-high-street-split).

[r-ness.livejournal.com]

Sure, no disagreement on that.

I'm thinking that Australian vendors may be able to resist/fly under the radar of designers because they're a relatively small and out of the way market, so the vendors can do what they want. And they may not have the same prejudices that European and North American companies and designers do.

This may also explain Zara's curious decision to stick Australia under their Asian division. It makes no sense from a product point of view, but looking from a boardroom in Galicia, Australia may just be "over by Asia somewhere", so logistics might take precedence over style and size.