Hollister is an American Lifestyle brand launched in 2000 and owned by Abercrombie and Fitch. The So Cal image was designed to attract a younger audience aged 14-18 with lower prices.
From the website:
"Hollister is the fantasy of Southern California by Abercrombie & Fitch. It’s all about hot lifeguards and beautiful beaches. Young and fun, with a sense of humour, Hollister never takes itself too seriously. Hollister’s laid back lifestyle and All-American image is timeless and effortlessly cool. Hollister brings southern California to the world."
The stores
Abercrombie & Fitch has designed Hollister Co. stores to simulate the appearance of vintage beach shacks in an indoor shopping mall, making Hollister stores stand out from any other store in the mall. Exterior décor include shuttered windows, and light and dark brown patten walls. A teal boardwalk with three steps leads to the entrance, with plans to eventually include a low-hanging chandelier on the porch of all stores, one of many upgrades being brought to all stores. The interior of the store is mostly concealed from outside view by a parallel wall. The shuttered windows were meant to add to the atmosphere of the store and keep out customers that did not fit in, while also allowing customers in wheelchairs access to the store without using the porch steps as these shuttered doors are in fact fully operational doors. Abercrombie & Fitch experimented with shuttered windows when they created Hollister Co. and the concept was eventually expanded to the Abercrombie & Fitch brand.
Retail space is divided into separate rooms with half of the store devoted to "Dudes" and the other to "Bettys" (which usually overflows onto the "Dudes" side in the back clearance room). Hollister Co. stores have their own monthly playlist, which is packed with surfer inspired tunes to set the whole beach shack mood and played at a fairly high volume through many strategically placed speakers throughout the store. Customers used to be able to choose the songs they want to hear using a touch screen positioned on the checkout counter wall, however this feature was removed leaving the touch screen to only display the songs titles and artists. Dimly lit by spot-lighting, the interior décor throughout includes leather armchairs, worn rugs, patterned wallpaper (part of the recent store upgrades), surf boards lining the wall behind the registers (some bearing "Hollister"), and potted palm trees placed around the store.
A central room (housing bodycare merchandise and the cashwrap or checkout area) plays as a "living room" and offers dozens of surf and general popular culture magazines for sale along with CDs of the music being played in store. The merchandise itself is displayed on built-in closets and shelves along with dark wooden tables, cots, and benches strategically placed in the rooms. Recently the stores have changed the layout and style of the merchandise tables, favoring rectangular tables over rounded tables for space and loss prevention reasons. Mandated by corporate, the stores and clothing itself are constantly kept scented with the current popular HCo fragrance SoCal via spritzing by employees and a recently installed computerised spritzing system installed in the ceiling which releases fragrance at timed intervals. This is part of the reason customers can usually smell the store before they even approach it, a good or bad effect depending on if one likes the fragrance, which many customers do and actually enjoy the clothing being "pre-scented".
A key to Abercrombie's brands is creating an elaborate 'pseudo-history'.
FICTIONAL CHARACTER: According to the "Brand History" pseudo history provided by the Abercrombie & Fitch Co., the Hollister Co. was created by a man named "John M. Hollister". The fictional John H. Hollister started the company in 1922 in Laguna Beach, while his son (John M. Hollister, Jr.) was "an avid and now legendary surfer... expanded the company to include surf apparel and equipment." Both Hollisters who served in the California Legislature were born at Hollister Ranch in Santa Barbara Co., which is a well-known surfing location. Additionally, much of the Hollister Co. clothing line features the label "Hollister, California" which is the name of a town founded by the actual John J. Hollister Sr.'s father.
Like the store the website is quite 'dark'
Authenticity statement
I had a personal experience of nearly being duped by one of the counterfeit websites as they are so similar in appearance. The clothes are made in Vietnam and Asia so who knows if the websites are buying 'Hollister' clothes from the same factories where 'Hollister' clothes are manufactured. DOES IT REALLY MATTER?
I placed an order on this website thinking it was a genuine 'outlet' style store only to discover on further investigation that it was based in Asia and was not linked to Hollister. Fortunately the payment I made failed to be approved so I could cancel the order. The website has actually been brought down now but Im sure they will be trading under a different name.
Creating conversations with their audiences
Abercrombie
Continued focus on building aspirational positioning of brands.
They actually employ 'Models' in store
Design is also 'key'to the brand and they have Graduate programmes
The sitch on fitch
A horrified Skater dudes take on the brand:
Well, here's why: Hollister wasn't established in 1922 at all. It was actually established in 2000 as a "spin-off brand" by it's parent company, the Abercrombie & Fitch Co. Likewise: Hollister isn't headquartered on a beach. Nor, are they even anywhere near one. The headquarters are actually just a couple of hours away from Indianapolis, in the suburb of New Albany, Ohio (just outside Columbus).
Hollister has no roots in surfing, and has nothing to do with surfing, except for the few "prop" surfboards that you'll find in their stores (some with the fins mounted backward, if you can believe that shit…!).
And, here's the logical follow-up question: Why would anyone in their right mind continue to buy into this bullshit, when there are so many legitimate surfwear brands out there that actually have deep roots in the history of surfing…?
Sources
http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/61/617/61701/items/249197/Piper_June_2007.pdf
Interesting comparison of Hollister trying to sue residents of the place Hollister for using their name to Simulacra and Simulacrum:
https://plus.google.com/106307741347872804380/posts/NL9YfLDjsPp
http://www.joincalifornia.com/candidate/5642
http://seekingalpha.com/article/214093-abercrombies-hollister-revenues-should-recover-with-u-s-economy
No comments:
Post a Comment