The fast-fashion chain Forever 21 has filed for bankruptcy and is preparing to close all of its stores.
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Forever 21 has filed for bankruptcy again. And this time, it could actually be forever as the company prepares to close all stores and wind down operations. Here’s NPR’s Alina Selyukh.
ALINA SELYUKH, BYLINE: Peak Forever 21 was in the early 2000s, when no self-respecting mall could go without the store – vast and bright and chaotic, overrun by cute tank tops, tight skirts and graphic tees.
TASHA LEWIS: I think it just had this really big, kind of bodacious presence in the mall.
SELYUKH: Tasha Lewis teaches fashion and retail studies at the Ohio State University. Forever 21 was often the draw, the reason young people came to the mall, a moment in time that had many millennials on TikTok reeling this week from the news of the store’s demise. I’m sad, but I don’t really shop there, says TikTokker Ziajenae. And that is the basics of what went wrong with Forever 21. Greg Portell, who advises retailers as a partner at the consulting firm Kearney, says the chain did not keep up with its shoppers.
GREG PORTELL: So if we think about that first time when Forever 21 caught magic, it was among a particular consumer group. That consumer group changes and ages.
SELYUKH: And you either choose to age with them, or you fight for younger shoppers again and again and again.
PORTELL: You’re only as good as your last season.
SELYUKH: Forever 21 rose at the dawn of the fast fashion era, one of its original giants who would take styles you’d see on runways or magazine pages and bring them to your local mall in a blink of an eye and cheaply. It expanded aggressively. By 2010s, Lewis says she remembers trying to figure out the company’s unique angle.
LEWIS: I never really got a sense of what their brand story was or what they were trying to say in terms of a fashion perspective. There was just a lot of stuff.
SELYUKH: A lot of stuff for a little money – the main appeal was price.
LEWIS: And if that is your value proposition, you are vulnerable because someone else may figure out how to do it cheaper. And they did.
SELYUKH: First came online rivals like Boohoo and ASOS and Fashion Nova. Forever 21 was losing money and shoppers. Some soured on fast fashion and the environmental impact. Others found competitors with fresher styles or higher quality. In 2019, the company declared bankruptcy for the first time. It survived as a shell of itself, bought out in a deal of two big mall operators and a brand licensing company. Then came the pandemic that shuttered stores and the rise of Temu and Shein, shipping clothes from China straight to American shoppers even cheaper, even faster than Forever 21.
PORTELL: They just got beat.
SELYUKH: Retail consultant Portell again.
PORTELL: Yes, they were good. But what makes you good 10 years ago doesn’t necessarily make you good today in retail. And that caught up with them.
SELYUKH: Forever 21 tried another maneuver by partnering with Shein, giving Shein access to physical stores and Forever 21 a new online audience. That didn’t help. One of the new Forever 21 owners later said that buying it was probably his biggest mistake. Today, what’s left of the chain is back on the auction block, and it’s unclear if anyone wants to buy what it has to offer.
Alina Selyukh, NPR News.
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