After its seventh quarterly loss, Abercrombie & Fitch has announced it is pulling its ubiquitous label from its clothing in an an attempt to reverse the trend.
The company made a somewhat opaque announcement Thursday, reporting its disappointing second-quarter results: "We are confident that the evolution of our assortment will drive further improvements going forward, in particular as we move past the headwind of adverse likes in our logo business as we work to strategically reduce that element in our assortment."
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Translation: Merchandise sporting the A&F logo is going away. During a call with analysts, CEO Mike Jeffries expanded on the thought, noting that the company's North American logo business would be reduced to "practically nothing" by spring 2015. That applies to clothes sporting the logo of A&F unit Hollister as well.
A&F plans to close up to 60 stores this year in the United States out of about 300. The brand has also revamped Hollister as a "fast fashion" brand designed to compete with the likes of H&M, which is stealing business from A&F with its logo-less clothing that sells for a fraction of the price.
Despite slack sales, A&F's stock price has soared 27% so far this year.