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Forever 21, Which Helped Popularize Fast Fashion, to File for Bankruptcy
- kyriakos 7y agoFast fashion doesn't need to be bad quality fashion.
- andrewksl 7y agoI think the quality is a side effect of the real problem with fast fashion: Implied disposability.
- indecisive_user 7y agoThe entire fashion industry is about disposability. Forever 21 simply fulfills it at a low price. If everyone tried to keep up with the latest trends we'd be throwing out nearly our entire wardrobe every year.
- Mathnerd314 7y agoThe only other substantial discussions on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7861442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7861442 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8971215 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8971215 I guess "fast fashion" means cheap sweatshop clothes. The bankruptcy is probably caused as much by rising standards of living in other countries as it is by the general shift to online ordering.
- kalleboo 7y agoIf that was the issue, it would be affecting Zara, H&M, Uniqlo etc as well. Zara is seeing record profits, H&Ms revenues are up but profits are down as they spent their money investing in online sales, Uniqlo profits are also up
- Mathnerd314 7y agoZara, H&M, and Uniqlo are actually somewhat fashionable, at least as "value" brands. Apparently there is some effect where the top 20 remain the top 20 because they are well-known or have other competitive advantages: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-state-of-fashion-2019-a-year-of-awakening https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/retail/our-insights/the-... For example https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/strategy/the-secret-of-zaras-success-a-culture-of-customer-co-creation/ https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/strategy/the-secre... lists Zara's 1-week supply chain and responsive customer service as Zara's advantages. And Uniqlo similarly has some proprietary fabric technology: https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/strategy/uniqlo-the-strategy-behind-the-global-japanese-fast-fashion-retail-brand/ https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/strategy/uniqlo-th.... Meanwhile https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/branding/forever21-fast-fashion-with-an-edge/ https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/branding/forever21... lists nothing besides their knockoffs being really cheap (and the associated piracy and labor lawsuits). I don't have time to go through all the other failing stores like American Apparel, Dressbarn, JCPenney, Gap, etc., but the story is probably similar, pointless products with no obvious differentiation. H&M is more interesting, massive chain with CEO/management trying to turn it into something more lean / innovative. It's kind of like Amazon with Whole Foods. The eventual outcome of both is uncertain but so far they're moving along.
- achow 7y agoThis is addressed in the article: Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia Business School, said that he believed fast fashion was as popular as ever, pointing to the success of Zara, but that Forever 21 had expanded far too quickly “without regard to a reasonable outlook. It’s a self-inflicted catastrophe”
- Angostura 7y agoI would hope that the reason for failure was more about this: > Forever 21’s struggles have provoked questions around the appeal of fast fashion more broadly. The industry has faced backlash surrounding the environmental impact of quickly disposable clothes and concerns about worker safety ... > Younger shoppers have increasingly turned to consigned goods and brands that claim sustainability as a value... But I wouldn’t bet big money on it.
- BrentOzar 7y ago> I guess "fast fashion" means cheap sweatshop clothes. Anecdotal: my wife started calling it "Forever Toilet Paper" because the clothes disintegrated so quickly (as opposed to Zara and other fast fashion brands that, while fast to market, still put at least a little work into quality.)
- kabacha 7y agoYes, who would have guessed that you get better quality by paying almost 10 times the price. Shirts at Zara are 60$ while forever21 like 10$. The problem with clothes manufacturing is that there's huge diminished returns - by paying 6 times more you don't get 6 times higher quality. Clothes technology is rather simple.
- lallysingh 7y ago"paying almost 10 times the price. Shirts at Zara are 60$ while forever21 like 10$." That's six times.
- spookthesunset 7y ago> Clothes technology is rather simple. This feels like when somebody with no clue about development claims whatever you are working on is “simple”. Something tells me clothes technology is far more complex than you claim.
- Arnt 7y agoFast fashion means three-week fashion cycles. That a fashion cycle is a single delivery, and the shop cannot order more if something is a great success. What you say sounds wrongish... In a fast fashion shop you can try on ten things this week and ten _other_ things next week, and rate of change makes online ordering look slow.
- fiachamp 7y agoDated a top F21 buyer for a few years and I can say that: 1) Prototype to street was way more than 3 weeks. More like 3 months (still faster than most fashion which makes buys 6 months ahead). Zara is the main large retailer that is actually about 1 month from concept to store. 2) The quality of their men's wear was pretty good for the price. 3) They worked their corporate employees to the bone and paid them 60-70% as much as other retailers for the same job. Girlfriend ended up doubling her pay upon accepting a role with another retailer. And on her last day, they still left her a pile of work that took until 5am to finish...Greedy and unprofessional. 4) Sad to see a whole lot of honest employees lose their jobs. Although the owners of F21 had a big fall coming given the amount of greed and indifference they expressed to employees https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-forever-21-factory-workers/ https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-forever-21-factory-wo...
- donkeyd 7y ago> Prototype to street was way more than 3 weeks. More like 3 months (still faster than most fashion which makes buys 6 months ahead). Those are different things, right? From what I understand, Apple works on a phone for about 3 years, but they cycle every year. You can have multiple 'prototype to street' cycles running that deliver a new collection every 3 weeks. I'm not sure that's how it works in fast fashion, but I wouldn't be surprised if it does.
- mikestew 7y agoMy understanding of the difference is that Apple doesn't have "Phone Fashion Week" defining what their phones should look like this year. They get to make that decision on their own. As opposed to someplace like Forever 21, where Fashion Week comes and says, "ready...go!" and now they have to go make clothing. The caveat is that this is just what I read. I wear 501s and a non-print shirt (yes, sadly, it's sometimes black) to the office every day, what do I know?
- neonate 7y agohttp://archive.is/gcj3w http://archive.is/gcj3w
- aitchnyu 7y agoWhy does this deserve front page? I read the article expecting customers got woke and are demanding ecofriendly and labourer-friendly clothing. Seems all about bad business decisions, and other fast fashion companies will soon fill that vacuum.
- firefoxd 7y agoWhile fashionnova is booming. To give you an idea how fast FN is, they'll sell then make a product (in that order) so fast that when the customer gets it in the mail, the paint hasn't dried yet. Quality is not their forte.
- alaskamiller 7y agoAmazon will eat this up. They're eating up the custom apparel with the tshirt printing part.
- adrr 7y agoThat doesn’t make sense to me and I work in the fashion industry. Unless you want to pay tens of thousands to air freight goods, min time is at least two weeks.
- proverbialbunny 7y agoBack in '08-'09 Forever 21 was my favorite clothing store. They had styles there that fit well, looked good, used comfortable fabric, and was relatively cheap. Given how the economy was doing at the time, it gave Forever 21 an advantage: clothes 2-3x cheaper and clothes quite a bit more enjoyable to wear. But the fabric they used disintegrated on me, as woman's clothes tend to. (Men get thicker fabric, but at the expense of being less stretchy. Women like to show off their curves.) The problem with this being that no one else made the styles I enjoyed. It was a fad that came and went. It doesn't exist in thrift stores. I don't even know what to call it, so I can't find pictures in an image.google search. Forever 21 made products I liked, but then they switched and I (and my friends) couldn't find anything that came close since. The last time I bought clothes at Forever 21 was in 2010. Since then H&M has caught on like wildfire taking over the market Forever 21 once had. They do a lot of the same, but their clothes are even cheaper (why?) and in my current wardrobe my favorite clothes have come from H&M. I'm afraid the same fate will come to H&M that has come to Forever 21. Or maybe H&M will learn from F21's mistakes. Only time will tell.
- atoav 7y agoMy girlfriend worked as a weaving technician and she said the H&M stuff got much worse over the past decade and subjectively it is true. The stuff literally disintegrates if you have it in the drier to often. Sadly enough this is also true for the men’s wear. I certainly try to spend a little more and get quality stuff. Second hand stores can also be great because you can find great quality stuff that feels better after the 20th wash than the H&M stuff feels fresh out of the store.
- jesterson 7y agoI personally can see how H&M quality went down in last 10 years. Around 10 years ago it was decent quality for reasonable price, not it's just things I'd avoid even touching.
- zuzun 7y agoI would say their quality improved. For example, 10 years ago their t-shirts were really thin with skewed cuts that became evident once you tried to fold them. Now the t-shirts are made of much thicker cotton and the cutting follows a proper pattern.
- kart23 7y agoGood. The only fast fashion brand I truly like is uniqlo, but forever 21 was always at the bottom of my list. All of their clothing had prints that looked like it came out of a machine learning algo that wasn't trained properly. I dont understand how they afforded to open these giant stores in the hottest malls. A fun game that I played with friends is to go into f21, try on clothes and see who can assemble the most absurd outfit.
- Dude2029 7y agoUniqlo is not fast fashion, apart from T-shirt prints they have same styles every year.
- 2rsf 7y agoMy wife calls Uniqlo a functional fashion store, nice things but built to be used and possibly last longer- if not because of quality then because of the lack of here and now feeling.
- kart23 7y agoThey were on the wikipedia page, so I went off that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fashion#List_of_fast_fashion_brands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_fashion#List_of_fast_fash...
- aaron695 7y agoWorking in the NGO industry you'll quickly see private businesses do orders of magnitude more good than 99% of NGOs. Fast Fashion has pulled millions of women out of sex work and helped support their extended families. I'm not worried Forever 21 has collapsed, other fashion houses will move in.
- benbristow 7y agoMy ex took me there in Tokyo when I visited Japan. Shiny shops and good background music but crap for men's clothes. 3 floors of women's clothes and a tiny corner for men's. Not great.
- kennywinker 7y agoOne thing they DID have is a great selection for larger women. While most stores cater to the skinny+young (see brandy melville's "one-size-fits-all" policy), many forever 21 locations had a large plus size section that I know was appreciated by many women.
- antarcticablue 7y agoForever 21's app is really bad, it just couldn't compete with other brands like zara and uniqlo.
- romanovcode 7y agoApp, really? I really don't think a mobile app is at play here at all.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- GrayTextIsTruth 7y agohow much do cheap plastic clothes (polyester, spandex, elastic) contribute to the micro-plastics epidemic I saw on HN recently? I've been trying to get 100% natural materials (cotton, wool, leather) and they seem more comfortable, less stuffy (especially for sleeping) but that might be a placebo.
- ehnto 7y agoFrom what I have been reading, quite a bit. The plastic lint ends up in the water ecosystem pretty quickly compared to other plastics through washing and drying, and they're not obvious being so small. I imagine most people don't think about their plastic fabrics being plastic at all, they really don't feel like plastic. So when you see lint balls or bits of lint floating about the house you don't think to yourself "Ah, little bits of plastic going into my lungs". When you empty the lint catcher in a drier and pop it right in the bin, it probably doesn't cross most minds that it's a little bundle of plastic fibers. I like to consider myself pretty well informed on the topic and it wasn't until this year that clothing fibers even crossed my mind.
- furyg3 7y agoSomehow in most of the apartments I've lived the toilet was always really close to the dryer. So for many many years I would just throw everything from the lint trap into the toilet to be flushed next time I use the restroom. Without thinking about it, it seemed like 'organic' material. Probably most of it was (I tend to use the dryer mostly for towels and bedding, which is mostly cotton). One morning it occurred to me that I've been flushing microplastics away, which is really terrible... Catching particles coming from the wash seems like a pretty tough problem. Even if the washing machine could somehow catch these, I can't see consumers (and thus manufacturers) jumping at the chance to clean out dirty soapy goop from a washing machine filter... which I imagine will resemble cleaning out a shower drain trap pretty quickly.
- ehnto 7y agoEven if they did clean it out, they would probably put it in the trash anyway. Some cities could process it in their recycling process, but that's not every city. I don't think there is a way for us to have plastic fabrics without the microplastics ending up in the environment.
- mosselman 7y agoFast fashion is a huge burden on the environment and should not be supported. So good riddance.
- noodlesUK 7y agoI’ve seen a lot of people going on about fast fashion recently. I’m aware of lots of shops that are considered fast fashion, but which ones aren’t? Where should I be going to buy more durable clothes that are made of nicer materials? I’m genuinely curious. I’d like to change my buying patterns (I’m really not that fashion conscious, so long as I can have some nice button ups and trousers I’ll be happy).
- bananatron 7y agoDespite being seen as the stereotypical tech-worker uniform, Patagonia seems to use well-sourced, high quality material (and they have repair centers).
- noodlesUK 7y agoI’m familiar with Patagonia, but I’ve mostly seen them as an outdoor clothing company, not anything that I’d consider (non SV tech) business casual/smart. Are there any companies that make that sort of stuff that aren’t evil? Like more what you’d find at GAP or a department store, but not made by slave labour.
- nateweiss 7y agoI personally like American Giant [1] and Flint & Tinder [2]. Neither has as wide a selection as GAP, and are more on the casual side, but have stuff that can work as business casual. The latter is menswear only, so if you're female not so useful. [1] https://www.american-giant.com https://www.american-giant.com [2] https://huckberry.com/flint-and-tinder https://huckberry.com/flint-and-tinder
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rfwhXQ5H 7y agoUniqlo
- dehrmann 7y ago> Mr. Chang, the company’s chief executive, said in a 2012 interview that the chain was named Forever 21 because it targeted 20-somethings and because “old people wanted to be 21 again, and young people wanted to be 21 forever.” I like how he felt like he needed to explain that one.
- qubex 7y agoThe funny thing is that the statement is not true, the first store was called “Fashion 21” and they renamed themselves when they started opening other stores.
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoThat doesn't necessarily invalidate the statement, they presumably put a great deal of thought into their new name. If their first store was called "Fashion 75", do you think they would have chosen "Forever 75" as their new name?
- swah 7y agoI never noticed the name was something about age until now...
- jdjdjjsjs 7y agoDid they keep the Bible quotes on their international stores as well? Because I don't think their underhanded religiosity would fly as well outside the US.
- xivzgrev 7y agoHere’s some info on potential reasons why they are going bankrupt. -they are mall centric store and mall traffic has been declining. Other chains have been “right sizing” -big discount stores (target, Walmart, TJ Maxx, etc) have upped their (discounted) fashion game -forever 21 was slow to adjust to these broader trends vs competitors I also agree with proverbialbunny. My girlfriend used to go there regularly but we haven’t been to one for ages. Could just be us getting older though :) https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/why-forever-21-will-probably-go-bankrupt-and-disappear-165236255.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/...
- colmvp 7y agoOverall mall traffic might be declining but I’ve been to malls here in my city where the higher end malls are thriving and more popular than in previous decades. The Forever 21’s in my area are located in malls that are dated, and ripe for a major renovation.
- proverbialbunny 7y agoThat's a really good point. I can understand why other stories have been dying to wanting quality merchandise. Victoria Secret is going out of business, but True (an online only company as far as I know) is amazing. I'm in love with their products. Victoria Secret I never cared for.
- magduf 7y ago>big discount stores (target, Walmart, TJ Maxx, etc) have upped their (discounted) fashion game Huh? This is true I suppose for Walmart and Target, but TJ Maxx just sells overstock stuff that didn't sell elsewhere.
- RandallBrown 7y agoThat's a bit of a myth actually. While they do get lots of their merchandise that way, they don't get all of it. Check out bullet number 4. https://fortune.com/2014/07/24/t-j-maxx-the-best-retail-store/ https://fortune.com/2014/07/24/t-j-maxx-the-best-retail-stor...
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agoI'm a little surprised by this. Forever 21, I thought was the fashionable dollar store equivalent for clothing. It should've done much better than other higher end brands, considering how millenials are spending less and less on clothing. Also, how are people wearing out their clothes so quickly. I bought a super cheap shirt from forever 21 once and it lasted for years with no sign of wear.