Do Win Chang was 30 years old when he and his wife Jin Sook Chang opened a store in the Los Angeles area of Highland Park and called it Fashion 21 in 1984.
The couple, who moved from Korea three years ago, sold clothing and apparel to teens and young adults at almost unbeatable prices. The 900-square-foot store generated $700,000 in its first year and became a staple in the fashion scene known as Forever 21.
At its peak, Forever 21 operated over 800 stores worldwide, earning billions of revenue. The brand particularly appealed to young women and helped pioneer the era of fasting in the United States.
However, time for a company that is in the spotlight is coming to an end. The US operator of Forever 21 is planning to close around 200 stores and its downtown Los Angeles headquarters. The move reportedly is part of the first bankruptcy filing in six years.
Approximately 360 employees working at headquarters will be fired from April, including the highest financial officer, according to regulatory submissions to the California Employment Development Division.
Representatives from Forever 21 did not respond to requests for comment.
“The operating company for Forever 21, a US brand licensee, will continue to consider strategic options, including potential sales, reducing costs and optimizing store footprint.” “Efforts are ongoing and no final decisions have been made regarding the outcome of the process.”
Industry experts say that the near-irrelevant state of Forever 21’s retail pioneering was driven by several missteps, including growing too quickly, catching up to rapid changes in fast fashion trends, and not being able to keep up with increasing competition from cheap online retailers.
Nicole Craig, a professor at the Arizona State University Institute of Fashion Design and Merchandising and a former Forever21 corporate employee, said: “They’ve been very successful for a long time, but sometimes it can be hard to incorporate teenage brands and make them bigger.”
Craig worked as a senior buyer for Forever 21 and later worked as a private supplier until 2019, when the company first filed for bankruptcy.
As part of the bankruptcy process, the company’s intellectual property was jointly acquired by the authentic brand group and mall operator Simon Property Group and Brookfield Property Partners. Forever 21 is one of Simon and Brookfield’s biggest tenants.
Center shopper Cristina Blade recently bought it in 2011 during the opening of the new Forever 21 store at Beverly Center in Los Angeles.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Due to STEM’s losses, Forever 21 could pursue another bankruptcy filing, including selling the assets or liquidating the remaining stores, Bloomberg reported.
Forever 21 currently has 58 locations in California, and several locations in Los Angeles County.
The Santa Monica Place store is mostly empty on Friday afternoons, taking advantage of a small number of customers closing out sales of up to 40% off.
From its humble beginnings at Highland Park, Forever 21 has expanded rapidly in the US and abroad, reaching $4.4 billion in 2015.
Large, discontinued department stores such as Mervyns went out of business in the early 2000s.
“There was a lot of huge retail space that suddenly became available,” Craig said. “In hindsight, that probably wasn’t a big move. The reality is that there wasn’t enough business.”
During the heyday of the 2010s, Forever 21’s main competitors were Swedish fashion retailers H&M and Zara, owned by Spanish multinational retailer Inditex. Forever 21 carved out a niche in the teenage girls market, but its idiosyncraticity was quickly limited as it failed to attract older customers.
“The difference is that Forever 21 was truly considered a teenage brand, while H&M and Zara weren’t,” Craig says. “It can be very difficult to change public perception.”
Intensifying competition from online retailers
Forever 21 faces intense competition from online only retailers, including other up-and-coming brands such as Temu and Edikted, offering more products at lower prices. In 2023, Forever 21 announced a partnership with Shein, a Singapore-based first fashion retailer. There, they brought Shein products to the store and joined forces with major competitors.
Fashion Nova, another Los Angeles-based first fashion retailer, operates mostly online, but has also been cut to Forever 21’s customer base.
“The problem was that Shane and Tem became fundamental leaders in fast fashion,” said Ilsemetcheck, former president of California Fashion Asson. “There was no way the price of the Forever 21 would match the price online given that I had to pay rent.”
Additionally, Forever 21 did not invest enough in advertising and online merchandising, Metcheck said. They also failed to build relationships with influencers who could attract young shoppers on social media.
“Teenagers today have moved forward,” she said of 21 forever. They leave behind a legacy of the way they began everywhere they once were. ”
Some chains are rebounded by creating new names to appeal to a new customer base. The owner of Urban Outfitters, a retail chain that is sold primarily to young adults, opened Anthropology in 1992 to provide a place for young shoppers to graduate, Craig said.
Similarly, Victoria Secret created the pink brand to serve young customers without sacrificing the mature reputation of the original brand. Abercrombie and Fitch are back from the brink.
Forever 21 will likely need to change its name and image for it to continue, industry analysts say.
“Forever 21 was a brand used by previous generations,” said Roger Beahm, professor and director of the retail learning lab at Wake Forest University. “Shoppers today want their brand. They want their own identity.”
Fast fashion’s popularity – widely considered environmentally unsustainable and harmful – has also dipped dramatically, colliding with public perceptions of Forever 21.
“H&M and Zara are still considered fast fashion, but they managed to escape some of the daggers that hit Forever 21,” Craig said. “Fast fashion isn’t what most customers are looking for right now.”
Shoppers in 2025 have different relationships with brick and mortar stores and shopping malls, Beam said. Before the pandemic, the mall was a place for teens to socialize, eat and shop. Now, all generations are used to online shopping, so the malls are not popular at destinations, he said.
“Even where there are stores, it was handicap for them in terms of expanding their appeal,” Beam said.
In addition to apparel for young women, Forever 21 has made other attempts to broaden its customer base by offering options for men and children. But in doing so, they diluted the original focus of their brand, Beam said.
“War is won and lost in the minds of consumers,” he said. “Forever 21 is no longer able to reach the heart and mind of their original outlook. In my opinion, it will be impossible to return from where they are now.”
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