Urban Outfitters admits it doesn’t know how to sell to Gen Z. Now it wants to pull off an Abercrombie-like turnaround
CNN
Selling baggy jeans isn’t enough to win over Gen Z. Urban Outfitters, the young adult retailer known for its alternative, vintage-inspired styles, learned this the hard way.
Selling baggy jeans isn’t enough to win over Gen Z. Urban Outfitters, the young adult retailer known for its alternative, vintage-inspired styles, learned this the hard way. During its most recent earnings call, the company candidly admitted it didn’t know how to market to the demographic that made it a household name — young people. Urban Outfitters is now staging a turnaround, with the ambition of finding the success of rivals like Abercrombie & Fitch. Among its mistakes, the brand acknowledged missing the “rapid and seismic shifts” between millennials and Gen Z during the global pandemic. “As these shifts occurred and a new generation began coming of age, we lost focus on our customer, and we lost track of how to win with them in today’s dynamic retail environment,” Shea Jensen, president of Urban Outfitters Brand in North America, said in an earnings call in August. Because of that failure, Jensen said the company couldn’t gain new Gen Z customers while losing the millennials, but remains “optimistic about our ambition to become the definitive brand for young adults.” Urban Outfitters — which is part of a conglomerate that includes Anthropologie, Free People and rental site Nuuly — faced a 9.3% drop in sales in the second quarter of 2024. Urban is a sore spot in the overall business; declining while the group’s total sales have grown 6% to a second-quarter record of $1.35 billion.
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