Abercrombie & Fitch

Fran Horowitz took over Abercrombie & Fitch Co. in 2017 and led one of the most complete turnarounds in specialty retail, remaking a logo-driven teen brand associated with the exclusionary marketing of its early-2000s peak into an adult-oriented apparel label competing on product quality, fit range, and wardrobe versatility. The group, listed on the New York Stock Exchange under ANF, reported record net sales of approximately $5.3 billion in fiscal year 2025, its thirteenth consecutive quarter of growth. The momentum has since rotated within the portfolio: Hollister carried fiscal 2025 with 15% net sales growth, while the Abercrombie mainline, after several years of outsized gains, was roughly flat.

The company was founded in 1892 in Manhattan by David Abercrombie as an outdoor and sporting goods outfitter, supplying expedition equipment to figures including Theodore Roosevelt and Ernest Hemingway. In the 1990s, the brand was acquired by The Limited and rebuilt into the youth-fashion retailer that defined its first era of mass recognition. The modern Abercrombie brand targets a customer in their twenties and thirties, a deliberate shift upward from the teen positioning of its peak years, with an assortment spanning denim, tailored and casual apparel, dresses, and the outerwear that traces back to the brand’s origins. The turnaround rebuilt the label around elevated basics, an expanded size and fit range, and a marketing approach that abandoned the controversial imagery of the earlier period. Hollister serves the teen customer that Abercrombie itself vacated, abercrombie kids extends the mainline aesthetic to children, and Gilly Hicks, the loungewear and intimates line, now operates largely as a store-in-store format inside Hollister locations rather than as a standalone fleet.

Abercrombie operates a smaller, more productive store fleet than it carried at its 2000s peak, having closed underperforming large-format flagships in favor of higher-productivity stores in stronger centers. Within the Malls.com network, the mainline brand holds US positions at South Coast Plaza, Cherry Creek Mall, Ala Moana Center, NorthPark Center, The Mall at Short Hills, and Tysons Corner Center, with international placements at Dubai Mall and Mall of the Emirates in the Gulf, a dense Canadian presence led by Yorkdale and Toronto Eaton Centre, and expansion positions across China, Mexico, and Western Europe. The real estate strategy now favors quality over footprint count, concentrating in Class A and A++ centers where the elevated brand positioning aligns with the surrounding tenant mix.

The turnaround also changed the brand’s value as a tenant. Where the label was once a lease-liability risk during its years of declining relevance, the repositioned brand draws a higher-spending adult customer and has reported among the stronger comparable-sales records in mall-based apparel, making a mainline Abercrombie store a positive co-tenancy signal on the contemporary fashion floor. The multi-brand structure gives operators several distinct leasing prospects from one counterparty: the elevated Abercrombie mainline for premium and upper-tier centers, the growth-carrying Hollister banner for teen-oriented regional malls, and the smaller abercrombie kids and Gilly Hicks formats as complementary positions, the latter typically folded into Hollister space. The company’s return to unit growth after years of fleet contraction positions it as an active tenant for operators of higher-quality centers seeking to strengthen the young-adult contemporary segment.