American Apparel - Case Study Analysis

In the athletic apparel industry, as in any industry, it is key to stay in touch with the current trends in order to keep your products relevant. With Lululemon focused on such a niche activity it will be important that they explore other markets within the sports apparel industry in the future so as to stay relevant. We can see the company’s first steps in doing just this when they recently introduced their men’s apparel line. A summary of the athletic apparel industry’s external environment are listed in Exhibit 1.

In 1947, the incredible apparel retailer was founded by Erling Persson in Sweden. Over half century, Persson’s 34 years old grandson, named Karl-Johan Persson,

They also opened up their first store in Singapore in 2014. The company plans to open about twenty new stores in Asia and Europe each by 2017. They are trying to have enormous geographical reach expanding all over the world.

American Apparel is a vertically integrated clothing manufacturer, wholesaler, and retailer. AAI is best known for making basic, solid color T-shirts and undergarments. They have expanded into dresses, denim, bedding, pants, and accessories for men, women, children, babies, and dogs. Their long-term goal it to become the #1 destination for basic apparel – the first name that consumers think of for t-shirts, sweatpants, underwear, socks, etc.

American Eagle is recognized for using warehouse execution software with the strategy of creating a omni-channel distribution center. According to the American Eagle Outfitter’s 2016 annual report, the company has “invested in building omni-channel capabilities to better serve customers and gain operational efficiencies. These upgraded technologies have provided a single view of inventory across channels, connecting physical stores directly to our digital store, providing our customers with a more convenient and improved shopping experience” (p.6). This company has available multiple distribution channels and stores that lets the company faster serve their customers’ needs. By their physical and/or digital store, customers have a better access

Retailers such as Anthropologie are creating experiences for their customers to foster a relationship between brand and consumer. With improved in-store experiences, applications for mobile devices, and customer rewards or loyalty programs, big-name companies aim to please the customer. According to our mission statement, “Anthropologie is a lifestyle brand that imparts a sense of beauty, optimism, and discovery to our customer…where innovative merchandising, customer centricity, and a curated array of products come together to create an unimagined experience” (“Anthropologie”). An integral part of upholding our mission statement is the leadership within the company and within each store. Without their diligent implementation of the company’s mission, the brand would never have the success that is has.

JCPenney’s strategies have been successful so far, but still need to fulfil everything. They have everything planned out from 2015-2017. They biggest things that is keeping them a floating is the Sephora new plan. The portion of JCPenney’s net sales from women’s accessories has increased 12.0% in fiscal. The Sephora boutiques has delivered a good performance in the first quart of fiscal 2015. They are working on upgrading different merchandise, but some are taking longer than others to succeed are. It is all a time thing and making sure, they are making sales.

As of Jan 3, 2015, the company has 900 full-time and 3,200 part-time employees in 329 company-owned retail stores in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark.

Sport Apparel is a large industries with many firms such as Nike, Adidas, Reebok, Under Armour, the Gap, Athleta, Nordstrom, Lucy and Bebe store. Large industries allow multiple firms and producers to prosper without having to steal market share from each other. Large industry size is a positive for Lululemon Athletica. … This qualitative factor will lead to an increase in costs.

2. Richard M. Johns (2006). The Apparel Industry. 2nd ed. UK, London: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.. 1-124.

In 1988, Limited Brands acquired the company making apparel the focal point of its business.

Rivalry among existing competitors: The apparel industry is highly competitive with a great number of both local and global competitors. As the market is mature, its growth is small. Accelerated growth and expansion to new markets are not easy goals to achieve. The barrier to get out of the industry is quite low for distributors, but high for producers. Most fashion manufacturers moved their production base to low-cost countries like China as wage and raw materials in developed markets like Western Europe are high. Besides, there is no great discrepancy in terms of quality of products, so customers make their purchase choices based on price and brand recognition.

American Apparel is a fashion retailer and manufacturer that actually advertises itself as a vertically integrated industrial company.[2][3] The brand is based in downtown Los Angeles, where from a single building they control the dyeing, finishing, designing, sewing, cutting, marketing and distribution of the company 's product.[3][4][5] The company shoots and distributes its own advertisements, often using its own employees as subjects.[2][6] It also owns and operates each of its retail locations as opposed tofranchising.[7] According to the management, the vertically integrated model allows the company to design, cut, distribute and sell an item globally in the span of a week.[8] The original founder Dov Charney has remained the majority shareholder and CEO.[9] Since the company controls both the production and distribution of its product, it is an example of a balanced vertically integratedcorporation.

Dov Charney, who rose to profitability as a T-shirt by applying unique business model, founded American Apparel in 1997. Company’s headquarters and manufacturing facility were located at the same building in downtown Los Angeles, with Charney paying his workers high salaries and providing all- inclusive benefits. While the costs of manufacturing process were significantly higher than other company’s, the company made itself capable to grow by applying “vertically integrated” structure. In this structure all features of business operations were combined for maximum efficiency and speed of production.

This work is an introduction to the fashion industry of Pakistan which has made quite a lot of progress in just a few years. Ten to fifteen years from now, this industry was still unknown to actually exist to the masses. Later with the formation of fashion councils and education centers under the enthusiastic few who wanted to make a difference and promulgate this very institution of fashion, did the very fashion industry took its concrete contour from the old tailor culture that formerly existed. Today it is one of the most progressing industries in the country.