Name: How Forever 21 Went From $4B in Sales to Going Bankrupt Twice | WSJ What Went Wrong
Uploaded: 2025-03-18T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 6 min 5 s
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Forever 21 was a fast fashion pioneer known for selling trendy clothes at rock-bottom prices.

At its peak, the company had more than 800 physical stores and over $4 billion in sales.

But now, the fast fashion kingpin is toppling from competition within its own industry.

The company has filed for bankruptcy for the second time, forcing it to shutter stores across the U.S. and lay off hundreds of employees.

The story of Forever 21 started when a couple from Korea pulled together $11,000 in savings to open the first store in Los Angeles in 1984, calling it Fashion 21.

Teen apparel retail has been around for decades.

And Aeropostale or Abercrombie or Gap, they're definitely the stalwarts of teen apparel.

I think the difference with Forever 21 is that when retailers like them came along, they were on top of the latest trends and styles much faster than retailers had been in the past.

Competitors like Zara and Topshop were already selling similar products.

But Forever 21 offered cheaper prices to consumers.

Sweatshirts, button-downs, you name it, Forever 21 probably had it, and for cheap.

They would carry very trendy styles, styles that you would see in designer clothing stores that were priced much higher.

So, this allowed a very fashion-conscious consumer to buy these types of apparel.

Around 12% of teen consumers listed Forever 21 as their favorite brand in 2011, and sales for the retailer peaked at more than $4 billion in 2014.

Forever 21's success quickly took the brand global.

The retailer opened more than 200 stores internationally, and at least 70 of those stores were 35,000 square feet or larger, including a 90,000-square-foot store in Times Square.

The big spaces, 35,000 square feet, that was something that they really emphasized and they really believed in, but that also meant that they had to have a lot of inventory.

Over time, that became a financial drain for the company and wasn't so easy to manage.

In 2019, Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy, citing its rapid international expansion and underperformance as key reasons.

Stores in Canada, Europe, and Asia lost $10 million on average in 2018 and 2019.

It wasn't just international sales that plummeted for Forever 21.

It was also sales in U.S. malls, where the fast fashion retailer was a major tenant.

That drop stems from the rise in e-commerce and the COVID-19 pandemic.

They were very slow to adapt to e-commerce.

By the time they filed for bankruptcy, only 16% of their sales were through e-commerce.

And at that point, a lot of companies had already made e-commerce a much stronger part of their offering.

Forever 21 continued to hemorrhage cash to the tune of $120 million, just one month after filing for bankruptcy.

That's when licensing firm Authentic Brands Group and real estate companies Simon Property Group and Brookfield Property Partners joined forces to buy Forever 21.

If you lose your biggest stores, who's going to come into your malls?

And then what does that mean about your other tenants?

Part of the proposition was that with Simon and Brookfield, they're going to be more flexible about rents because they are the landlords and they might tie the rents to the revenue.

You're giving the retailer a bit more wiggle room when things aren't going so well.

Authentic Brands is known for scooping up many fallen legacy brands, like Arab Hostel, Brooks Brothers and Reebok, and attempting to save them from extinction by licensing the brands to the highest bidder.

The company declined to comment on this story.

But even under new ownership, Forever 21 was up against a different challenge.

Asian e-commerce powerhouses like Shein and Temu, which utilize thousands of factories in China to pump out new products at even lower prices.

A Forever 21 graphic t-shirt sells for around $11, compared to just $5 at Shein.

So Forever 21 formed a partnership with Shein in 2023.

Other retailers are going to have to learn what Shein's doing if they want to compete because they're just faster and better understanding the customer.

Shein offered Forever 21's lineup on its website and for sure that got them some sales, but it didn't offset enough the loss from the competition from Shein.

Forever 21 ultimately was undermined by companies like Shein that can do it faster and cheaper.

The remaining Forever 21 stores across the U.S. have begun liquidation sales, offering hefty discounts on remaining products.

But that doesn't mean Forever 21 will be completely gone.

Authentic brands, they plan to continue to own Forever 21.

Then they have stores overseas that are not impacted by this bankruptcy.

Possibly someone like a Forever 21 served the purpose that both the mall owners and authentic brands wanted it to serve, which was that it continued to pull in traffic to the malls.

So that meant you had shoppers for all the other stores in Simon Properties' malls.

It's possible that, you know, they don't necessarily expect these companies to be profitable for them, you know, forever.