Forever 21 is a multinational fast fashion retailer headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. Originally founded as the store Fashion 21 in Highland Park, Los Angeles in 1984, it is currently operated by Authentic Brands Group and Simon Property Group, with about 540 outlets.
The company sells accessories, beauty products, home goods, and clothing for women, men and children. The company has been involved in various controversies that include labor practice issues and copyright infringement accusations.
History
1984–2017: founding and expansion
Originally known as Fashion 21, the store was founded in Los Angeles on April 16, 1984, by Do Won Chang and Jin Sook Chang, married immigrants from South Korea. The original store was located at 5637 N. Figueroa Street in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. Funded with $11,000 in savings, designs similar to those seen in South Korea were sold to and targeted at the Los Angeles Korean American community. Merchandise was acquired at wholesale closeouts from manufacturers. with sales totaling $US 700,000 in the store's first year of operation. The Changs later changed the name Fashion 21 to Forever 21 and changed the business model to fast fashion, drawing from trending fashion and selling the items for low prices. Sales were high enough in the first decade that the company added new stores on an average of every six months, largely in malls.
Forever 21 purchased the chain Gadzooks for $33 million in 2005, then doubled its number of stores to 400, over the next two years; retail analysts estimated sales growth from $640 million in 2005 to $1 billion in 2006. Unlike its competitors, the company also focused on whole families, rather than teenagers exclusively, and at a typical 25,000 square feet, had significantly larger stores. In 2006, the company opened its 40,000 square-foot showcase store in Pasadena, California, offering women's, men's, and children's clothing, as well as accessories and lingerie. Forever 21 was also operating a website and a number of free-standing For Love accessories stores. The company increased its square footage by 30% in 2007. In April 2008, the Chicago Tribune wrote that, while many retailers were scaling back expansion to adjust for the economy, Forever 21 was "going gangbusters" and expanding at a fast rate: over the prior three years its number of stores had doubled to around 400 worldwide.
In 2011, assets were $1.4 billion and profits were $124 million. That year the company was involved in a number of controversies. The Center for Environmental Health found that 26 retailers and suppliers, including Forever 21, had been selling jewelry containing cadmium, a toxic metal. That September, a settlement payment of $1.03 million and a 0.03% limit on cadmium in jewelry was the result. Also in 2011, several Forever 21 women's shirts were criticized by online users for seeming anti-education and sexist, including one that said "Allergic to Algebra", another that said "Skool sucks", and a third that had "I heart school" on the front and "not ..." on the back. Stating to ABC News that "our intent was not to discredit education," Forever 21 pulled the "Allergic to Algebra" shirt from its website. In April 2010, Rachel Kane, a writer and Forever 21 customer created a blog with the domain name WTForever21.com. Kane posted pictures of some Forever 21 items and voiced her opinions about the clothing. The blog's popularity rose after being featured on the Jezebel blog and, in June 2011, the retailer asked the blogger to take the site down or she might face a lawsuit. In September 2012, a lawyer filed a class action lawsuit against Forever 21 after receiving a penny less than original value during a return. According to media reports, to meet the $15,000 threshold in damages for the lawsuit to move forward, the case needed 750,000 other customers to sue as well. Forever 21 declined to comment on the matter, citing pending litigation.
By 2013, there were more than 480 stores and revenue of $3.7 billion. Between 2005 and 2015, international stores jumped from seven to 262. The family-owned company, which including the founders’ daughters, Linda Chang as executive vice president, and Esther Chang as vice president of merchandising, Forever 21's sales peaked in 2015, with $4.4 billion in global sales that year. Continuing to expand internationally, as of 2016, it had 31 locations in Brazil, although it had recently pulled out of Spain and Belgium. Forever 21 introduced the beauty chain Riley Rose in 2017, and later that year the company opened its 21st store in India. In 2017, revenue was $3.4 billion, a significant drop from the year prior.