Focus on Asia instead of Europe
Abercrombie will open new stores in Seoul and Shanghai, while Hollister will get twenty new locations,
including Australia, Dubai and Japan. The new locations should help in achieving
the expected growth of 15% profit per share each year.
The stores outside of the United States already comprised 40% of sales of Abercrombie & Fitch in 2012 (about 3.5 billion euro) and the impact of foreign sales will keep rising as the company is planning on closing stores on
the American market. This year about fifty locations will be closed,
within three years 180 locations will have gone.
The internationalisation has not been a great success
until now: last year the company decided to slow the European expansion due to
the economic crisis and disappointing sales. The focus on expansion in Asia
should solve that problem.
