It was all about our Abercrombie & Fitch logo, and the company was on fire.

這一切都與我們的 Abercrombie & Fitch 徽標有關，公司也是以火了起來。

Things were going up and up and up.

事情越來越多，越來越多。

But then, those sales started to move in the other direction.

但後來，這些銷售額開始向另一個方向發展。

Abercrombie & Fitch is learning the hard way that sex doesn't always sell.

Abercrombie & Fitch 正深刻地認識到，性並不總是賣點。

Abercrombie faced rising fast fashion competition and mounting lawsuits over discrimination, and the CEO who built the company's exclusive image retired abruptly.

Abercrombie 面臨著日益激烈的快時尚競爭和越來越多的歧視訴訟，而為公司樹立獨特形象的首席執行官也突然退休。

And everyone was left thinking, well, maybe that was the end of Abercrombie & Fitch.

每個人都在想，也許這就是 Abercrombie & Fitch 的結局。

But Abercrombie's team began wondering, who could have convinced to buy the brand again?

但 Abercrombie 的團隊開始思考，誰能說服他們再次購買該品牌？

I just knew that the Abercrombie adult brand had a huge opportunity.

我只知道，Abercrombie 成人品牌蘊藏著巨大商機。

Here's the case study on how Abercrombie went against industry standards, abandoned its teenage consumer, and aged up.

以下是關於 Abercrombie 如何違背行業標準，拋棄青少年消費者，走向成熟的案例研究。

First, the company had to distance itself from its former leadership.

首先，公司必須與前任領導層保持距離。

Who's going to be their new leader?

誰將成為他們的新領袖？

Everyone was kind of looking internally at Fran Horowitz.

每個人都把目光投向了弗蘭-霍洛維茨。

She's an industry veteran who had an eye for trend, who understood merchandising.

她是業內資深人士，對流行趨勢有敏銳的洞察力，瞭解商品銷售。

The business was in a downward spiral, and I knew I had an opportunity to bring these iconic global brands back to their rightful place.

我知道自己有機會將這些標誌性的全球品牌帶回其應有的位置。

The main objective was to stop giving up profits.

主要目標是不再放棄利潤。

Because not only did Abercrombie have a significant discount issue, but its other brand, Hollister, was also cannibalizing its business.

因為 Abercrombie 不僅存在嚴重的折扣問題，而且它的另一個品牌 Hollister 也在蠶食它的業務。

They were essentially the same product with two different logos on them, two different price points.

它們本質上是相同的產品，只是貼了兩個不同的商標，價格也不同。

So the first decision we had to make was, do we actually have one brand or do we have two?

是以，我們必須做出的第一個決定是，我們究竟是擁有一個品牌，還是擁有兩個品牌？

Like, do we pull this together and just own one marketplace?

比如說，我們要不要把這些東西集中起來，只擁有一個市場？

To answer that, Abercrombie began by looking at other marketplace opportunities.

為了回答這個問題，Abercrombie 開始尋找其他市場機會。

What part of the consumer base is being underserved?

哪部分消費者沒有得到足夠的服務？

Typically, we see a younger generation setting fashion trends.

通常，我們會看到年輕一代引領時尚潮流。

Anyone scrolling through TikTok or Instagram, you're influenced by a younger content creator.

任何人瀏覽 TikTok 或 Instagram，都會受到年輕內容創作者的影響。

But Abercrombie looked in the other direction.

但阿伯克龍比卻看向了另一個方向。

There's now this absolute huge raft of women making good money.

現在，賺大錢的女性絕對大有人在。

They need to look cool and they need to look professional.

他們需要看起來很酷，也需要看起來很專業。

But really, all they've been offered up until now is the same brands that their mothers were wearing.

但實際上，直到現在，她們所能得到的也只是母親們穿的那些牌子。

So Abercrombie decided to grow up with its customer.

是以，Abercrombie 決定與顧客一起成長。

Now we're talking about targeting a 25-year-old.

現在我們談論的目標是一個 25 歲的年輕人。

And that means that we're selling to people 20s, 30s, into their 40s.

這意味著我們的銷售對象是 20 多歲、30 多歲甚至 40 多歲的人。

A group that Abercrombie calls the young millennial.

這個群體被阿伯克龍比稱為 "千禧一代"。

But how does a brand just change who it sells to?

但是，一個品牌如何才能改變其銷售對象呢？

Now, the question, not easy.

現在，問題來了，不簡單。

The buying habits of millennials are different really than any other generation.

千禧一代的購買習慣確實不同於其他任何一代人。

You could lose relevancy with them.

你可能會失去與他們的相關性。

The company looked at data around the audience.

公司研究了閱聽人周圍的數據。

With logos out of style, Abercrombie kept them off the majority of its products.

由於徽標已經過時，Abercrombie 的大部分產品都沒有徽標。

Instead, the company found that this older audience cared more about an item's quality.

相反，該公司發現，這些年長的閱聽人更關心商品的品質。

Something that had been taken out of the clothes in previous years to lower production costs and compete with fast fashion.

前些年，為了降低生產成本，與快時尚競爭，服裝中已經沒有了這種元素。

Abercrombie says it reinvested in better buttons, zippers, and softer fabrics.

Abercrombie 說，它重新投資購買了更好的鈕釦、拉鍊和更柔軟的面料。

But the specifics about its fabrics are proprietary information.

但其織物的具體情況屬於專利資訊。

It's a little bit of inside baseball to be perfectly honest.

老實說，這有點像內部棒球比賽。

So I won't go too far on it.

所以我不會說得太多。

But it's about working very well with your sourcing team.

但是，這需要與採購團隊通力合作。

It took several years to see the style and quality changes reflected in the assortment.

經過數年時間，我們才在產品種類中看到風格和品質的變化。

But then...

但是...

The big, big turn started with denim.

大轉折始於牛仔布。

Denim was a strategic starting point since it was a key category for the brand and also one of the main items that excluded customers in the past.

牛仔褲是一個戰略起點，因為它是品牌的一個重要類別，也是過去排斥顧客的主要商品之一。

Either you fit in it or you didn't.

要麼適合，要麼不適合。

Today, they've really focused on fit.

如今，他們真正把重點放在了 "合身 "上。

Based on customer reviews, focus groups, and surveys, Abercrombie found that many women in its new audience were frustrated about this waist gap in pants.

根據客戶評價、焦點小組和調查，Abercrombie 發現新閱聽人中的許多女性對褲子的腰圍差距感到沮喪。

The leg might fit, but you might have some room in the waist.

腿部可能合身，但腰部可能有一些空間。

Getting a gap at the back of my waist.

腰部後側出現縫隙。

To solve this, Abercrombie invested in 3D fit tools and software that provide data on thousands of body types.

為了解決這個問題，Abercrombie 投資購買了 3D 合身工具和軟件，提供數千種體型的數據。

The company also changed its fit models to better align with its average customer.

該公司還改變了適應模型，以更好地適應普通客戶。

Through those changes, Abercrombie's team came up with a solution to solve this gap problem.

通過這些改變，Abercrombie 的團隊想出了一個解決方案來解決這個差距問題。

A new pant design that uses an additional two inches of material from the hip through the thigh.

一種新的褲裝設計，從臀部到大腿多用了兩英寸的材料。

And that brought us a whole new, much more diverse audience than we'd had in the past.

這給我們帶來了全新的、比過去更加多樣化的閱聽人。

From there, it was able to expand into other categories of its assortment.

從那時起，它就能夠擴展到其他類別的產品。

What is the most important thing to this young millennial?

對這位千禧一代的年輕人來說，最重要的是什麼？

And frankly, that is going away for a long weekend with their friends.

坦率地說，那就是和朋友們去度一個長週末。

And during that long weekend, there are so many opportunities to clothe them.

在這個長週末，有很多機會為他們提供衣物。

But the challenge with expanding an assortment is knowing how much of which products in which sizes.

但是，擴大產品種類的挑戰在於要知道哪些產品的規格有多少。

Old Navy a few years ago started to say, we're going to have plus sizes.

幾年前，Old Navy 開始說，我們要推出大尺碼。

We're going to have petite sizes.

我們將提供小號尺寸。

They were just left with too much inventory.

他們只是留下了太多的庫存。

They had an inventory problem.

他們遇到了庫存問題。

Abercrombie implemented a strategy of examining its stockpile on a weekly basis and adjusting based on what's happening in the market.

Abercrombie 實施的戰略是每週檢查庫存，並根據市場情況進行調整。

And this helped prepare Abercrombie for the industry's biggest hurdle in the past few years, the pandemic.

這也幫助 Abercrombie 做好了準備，應對過去幾年中行業面臨的最大障礙--大流行病。

One day we came in and we had to close all of our stores.

有一天，我們不得不關閉所有商店。

And what we learned then is we need less inventory tomorrow.

我們當時學到的是，我們明天需要更少的庫存。

When Abercrombie closed its stores in March 2020, it also canceled clothing orders with its supplier, which effectively struck its stockpile down 7% from the year prior.

2020 年 3 月，Abercrombie 在關閉門店的同時，還取消了與供應商的服裝訂單，這實際上使其庫存比前一年減少了 7%。

And as the market came back, we were starting from a very low inventory and it was good.

隨著市場回暖，我們的存貨量非常低，這很好。

The company has since continued this strategy.

此後，公司一直堅持這一戰略。

By 2023, it had brought levels down 30% year over year, enabling it to move with changing trends.

到 2023 年，它已將水準逐年降低了 30%，使其能夠順應不斷變化的趨勢。

To win with the customer, it's all about delivering newness.

要贏得客戶，關鍵在於提供新意。

You're getting new information.

你會得到新的資訊。

You're learning stuff every day from the consumer.

你每天都能從消費者那裡學到東西。

And this consumer-centric approach is fueled by Abercrombie's shift away from the storefront.

而這種以消費者為中心的方法，也得益於 Abercrombie 從店面的轉變。

The Abercrombie stores of today not only look different from its previous iterations, but there's also a lot less of them.

如今的 Abercrombie 商店不僅在外觀上與以前不同，而且數量也少了很多。

We had a lot of extra baggage when it came to real estate.

在房地產方面，我們有很多額外的包袱。

The locations were great, but the size was three times what we needed.

位置很好，但面積是我們需要的三倍。

From 2017 to 2021, Abercrombie reduced its store square footage by about 25%.

從 2017 年到 2021 年，Abercrombie 的店鋪面積減少了約 25%。

This allowed it to decrease rent costs by about $230 million.

這使其租金成本減少了約 2.3 億美元。

All the while, the company has invested in growing its audience online.

與此同時，該公司還在增加在線閱聽人方面進行了投資。

Now, around half of its sales happen digitally, which is about 20 percentage points higher than the industry average.

現在，該公司約有一半的銷售額是通過數字方式實現的，比行業平均水平高出約 20 個百分點。

When you have that much digital business, you get visibility into the browsing patterns and the shopping patterns because it's happening digitally.

當你擁有如此多的數字業務時，你就能瞭解瀏覽模式和購物模式，因為這些都是通過數字方式進行的。

And we're leveraging a lot of that data to be able to build rich customer profiles.

我們正在利用這些數據建立豐富的客戶檔案。

These profiles could signal things like which customers have an affinity for denim and which prefer dresses, so that when the company decides to do a discount offer, it knows which customer to target with which deal.

這些檔案可以提供一些信號，比如哪些顧客喜歡牛仔褲，哪些顧客喜歡連衣裙，這樣當公司決定提供折扣優惠時，就知道應該針對哪些顧客提供哪些優惠。

All that data gives us a much better likelihood of converting that customer into a sale.

所有這些數據使我們更有可能將客戶轉化為銷售。

This data has helped the company become more efficient with marketing spend.

這些數據幫助公司提高了營銷支出的效率。

Abercrombie is lucky in the sense that the brand itself is already known.

Abercrombie 是幸運的，因為品牌本身已經廣為人知。

They don't have to put a ton of marketing dollars into brand awareness.

他們不必為品牌知名度投入大量營銷資金。

What they do need to do is convince people that it's good.

他們需要做的是讓人們相信這是件好事。

A lot of the excitement about Abercrombie Adult particularly happened from the consumer.

消費者對 Abercrombie Adult 的熱情尤其高漲。

It's unreal.

太不真實了

Abercrombie's coming back?

阿伯克龍比要回來了？

I think I bought every dress that Abercrombie has.

我想我買了 Abercrombie 的所有衣服。

Never thought I'd be wearing this much Abercrombie in my early 30s, but here we are.

從來沒想過我在 30 歲出頭的時候會穿這麼多 Abercrombie，但我們還是來了。

That for a marketer is just absolutely the holy grail.

這對營銷人員來說絕對是聖盃。

While much of this was organic, Abercrombie also incentivizes its customers to post with a program it calls Creator Suite. 60% of consumers were influenced to buy something when they saw it on social media.

雖然這大部分是有機的，但 Abercrombie 還通過一項名為 Creator Suite 的計劃來激勵客戶發佈資訊。60%的消費者在社交媒體上看到某樣東西時，會受其影響而購買。

It is not a new story, but it remains a relevant one for the industry.

這不是一個新故事，但對該行業來說仍然具有現實意義。

And in 2022, when the company was still in the thick of its rebrand, Abercrombie announced an ambitious goal.

2022 年，當公司還在進行品牌重塑時，Abercrombie 就宣佈了一個雄心勃勃的目標。

Achieve top-line sales between $4.1 and $4.3 billion as well as a minimum profit of 8% operating margin.

實現 41 億至 43 億美元的最高銷售額，以及最低 8%的營業利潤率。

And?

然後呢？

We executed that almost two years early.

我們幾乎提前兩年執行了這一計劃。

For Abercrombie & Fitch, it wasn't a story of a rising tide lifts all boats.

對於 Abercrombie & Fitch 而言，這並不是一個水漲船高的故事。

They've won and they've grown in a really challenging and declining market.

他們贏得了勝利，並在一個極具挑戰性且不斷下滑的市場中實現了增長。

We have seen their stock have this insane rally.

我們看到他們的股票出現了這種瘋狂的漲勢。

It was even growing faster than Nvidia and this is in the year of AI.

它的增長速度甚至超過了 Nvidia，而今年正是人工智能年。

The company says it's been able to sell its products at higher prices with fewer discounts and now pivot to a different focus of the market.

該公司表示，它已經能夠以更高的價格、更少的折扣銷售產品，現在正轉向市場的另一個重點。

One of the surprising things that happened from that aging up strategy is that the company's audience went from being skewed mostly male to mostly female.

老齡化戰略帶來的一個令人驚訝的結果是，公司的閱聽人從男性居多變成了女性居多。

Today it's a bigger women's business.

如今，這是一個更大的女性行業。

An analyst say that shift plays into Abercrombie's larger audience change, given that millennial women spent more on apparel for themselves last year than any other generation.

一位分析師說，鑑於千禧一代女性去年為自己購買服裝的花費比其他任何一代人都要高，這種轉變與 Abercrombie 更大的閱聽人群體變化息息相關。

It is the biggest market out there.

這是最大的市場。

If they did not win with their female consumers first, it would have taken so much longer if not been successful at all.

如果他們沒有首先贏得女性消費者的青睞，那麼即使根本不會成功，也會花費更長的時間。

Still, some big questions remain.

不過，一些重大問題依然存在。

In late 2023, a new lawsuit accused Abercrombie & Fitch of enabling former CEO Mike Jeffries to run an alleged sex trafficking operation.

2023 年末，一項新的訴訟指控 Abercrombie & Fitch 讓前首席執行官邁克-傑弗里斯（Mike Jeffries）從事所謂的性交易活動。

When there's pending litigation, we frankly don't comment on it.

當有未決訴訟時，坦率地說，我們不予置評。

Yet many analysts today see Abercrombie as a successful reinvention.

然而，如今許多分析師認為，Abercrombie 是一次成功的重塑。

I think there's a lot of opportunities for brands and retailers.

我認為品牌商和零售商有很多機會。

You know, we think about The Gap, J.

你知道，我們會想到 The Gap，J.

Crew.

船員

They might not need as big of a rebrand as Abercrombie & Fitch had, but definitely looking on how to refresh and stay relevant with their consumer.

他們可能不需要像 Abercrombie & Fitch 那樣大刀闊斧地進行品牌重塑，但肯定會考慮如何煥然一新，與消費者保持一致。

Analysts do point to a tumultuous market and declining industry-wide demand as some hurdles ahead for Abercrombie.

分析人士指出，市場動盪和全行業需求下降是 Abercrombie 面臨的一些障礙。

Because in this industry, the challenge is always remaining relevant.

因為在這個行業中，我們面臨的挑戰是始終保持與時俱進。

Gen Z famously think millennials are very uncool.

Z 世代認為千禧一代非常不酷，這是出了名的。

Millennials are a big fan of Abercrombie right now.

千禧一代是 Abercrombie 的忠實粉絲。

So how are they going to connect those two dots?

那麼，他們如何將這兩個點聯繫起來呢？

How are they going to transition the people that are in their teenage years now into Abercrombie fans when they're in their 20s?

他們如何將現在處於青少年時期的人轉變為 20 多歲的 Abercrombie 粉絲？