Abercrombie & Fitch

Abercrombie & Fitch began on June 4, 1892, when David T. Abercrombie opened a small waterfront shop at 36 South Street in downtown Manhattan, selling camping and sporting equipment to serious outdoorsmen. Ezra Fitch, a wealthy New York businessman and regular customer, bought a major share in 1900 and joined as co-founder, and the company was renamed Abercrombie & Fitch in 1904.

By 1913 it had adopted the slogan “The Greatest Sporting Goods Store in the World,” and the store’s apparel, guns, tackle, and other merchandise became the image of correctness and opulence, inspiring the American humorist Ed Zern to lampoon a perfectly accoutred angler as an “Abercrombie and Fitcherman.”

Menswear sat at the center of the proposition from the start, framed around the well-equipped sportsman. The store sold outdoor and sporting equipment for hunting, fishing, camping, exploration, skating, polo, golf, and tennis, alongside outdoor clothing, boots, and shoes for both men and women.

The design language ran through safari jackets, field coats, riding gear, fishing vests, and shooting clothes in heavy cottons, tweeds, and waxed finishes, sitting in the same American sporting tradition later developed by Brooks Brothers, L.L.Bean, and, decades on, Ralph Lauren.

The credentialing came from its clientele. A&F equipped Theodore Roosevelt for an African safari, outfitted polar expeditions led by Roald Amundsen and Admiral Richard Byrd, and supplied flights made by Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart; Ernest Hemingway was a customer, and every president from Roosevelt to Gerald Ford bought something from the store.

The original business could not survive the cultural shift of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1976, Abercrombie & Fitch filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and in 1978 Oshman’s Sporting Goods, a Houston-based retail chain, bought the defunct firm’s name and mailing list for $1.5 million.

In 1988, Oshman’s sold the brand to Les Wexner’s The Limited, which shifted the focus to young adults, hired Mike Jeffries as CEO in 1992, spun the company off as a separate publicly traded business in 1996, and grew it into one of the largest apparel firms in the United States.

Jeffries stepped down in 2014 after years of controversy over racially insensitive products and hiring practices, and subsequent leadership shifted toward a more inclusive brand image, with a wider range of sizes and a step away from the provocative marketing of the past.

Today the company is headquartered in New Albany, Ohio, and focuses on contemporary clothing targeting customers in their early 20s to mid 40s, dressing a working-age customer in chinos, denim, knitwear, suiting separates, and outerwear sold in the mid-market tier alongside J.Crew, Banana Republic, and Madewell.