Abercrombie & Fitch to close London, Paris and Munich flagships

Abercrombie & Fitch announced Tuesday plans to close its flagship stores in London, Munich and Paris by the end of January as part of the ongoing restructuring of its store network.

The US fashion and lifestyle brand has previously announced plans to reposition from larger format, tourist-dependent flagship locations to smaller, omni-enabled stores that cater to local customers.

It said during its Q3 results it has already closed its Dusseldorf flagship during the third quarter and now plans to close the three other European flagships early next year, “well ahead of their natural lease expirations”.

In addition, its flagships in Brussels, Madrid and Fukuoka will close in early January 2021 due to natural lease expirations, leaving the company with eight operating flagships at year end compared to fifteen at the beginning of the year.

In fiscal 2019, these seven flagships had a combined adverse impact of approximately 20 basis points to comparable sales and approximately 10 basis points to operating margin, the company said.

The combined stores contributed approximately 1 percent to revenues and approximately 30 million dollars to annualized payroll and occupancy in fiscal 2019.

With the planned closures of these seven underperforming locations, the company said it removed approximately 85 million dollars of lease liabilities from the balance sheet, “reflecting the early exit from certain leases and the corresponding elimination of lease payments previously scheduled for fiscal 2021 through 2031”.

Photo credit: Abercrombie & Fitch, Facebook