Retail clothes store closed: big effect on Asians?
Although Qi Zhang can still smell the essence of Abercrombie perfume while passing 647 Massachusetts Street, where the retail store Abercrombie & Fitch used to be located, she can’t get in there anymore.
Downtown used to be one of Zhang’s favorite places in Lawrence because that’s where she can get name brand clothing without driving to the malls in Kansas City. But after Abercrombie was closed beginning of this fall semester, she doesn’t even want to go to downtown anymore. She feels like there is no place to shop.
Qi Zhang, a business major freshman at the University of Kansas, came to Lawrence from China two years ago. During the two years of her American culture and style exploration, she gradually became a loyal customer of Abercrombie & Fitch, because it seemed like the clothes in their brand always fits her 5’10 and 130lbs body.
One day Zhang came to downtown like usual, and she found out that not only the door of Abercrombie & Fitch was locked, but also she couldn’t even see any advertisements on the windows like before. “I was so surprised and I didn’t know what happened to them,” Zhang said.
Abercrombie & Fitch joined Gap and became one of the national retailers in downtown Lawrence since 1997. It was accused several times for discrimination of fat people because of its models and giving preferential treatment to employees that they "ranked" as most beautiful and best bodies.
“Our medium size is like their large size, so it’s almost like a size bigger,” said Annie, the store manager of Gap next door.
But that seems like no problem for a lot of Asian people. “In Korea, our size seven or eight is like size extra large here,” said Se Hyun Kim, a senior piano student from Korea. “Sometimes it is a little bit hard for me to find something that fits my body.”
According to the book “Body Size Accounts for Most Differences in Bone Density Between Asian and Caucasian Women”, Asians have lower body mess index and smaller frames than whites. One of the comments for the news “Abercrombie & Fitch to close on Aug 18” on LJWorld.com, someone called LawrenceRes (Anonymous) said, “I've seen a couple of items in there that I liked enough to pay a bit higher price for but I couldn't purchase because I'm not a size 10 or smaller.”
Smaller size clothes from Abercrombie & Fitch sometimes might offend some larger people, but it naturally becomes a lot of Asian people’s best choice.
“I’m 5’4 and I only weigh 90lbs. I don’t have eating disorder, it’s just I have extremely small bones,” said Yue Zou, an Accounting major freshman from China. “I’ve been looking for jeans that fits me since I came here last winter, and they are either too big on waist or too short for me, even it’s a size zero. And then I found Abercrombie & Fitch. They are perfect for me.”
Another reason that Abercrombie & Fitch is popular among Asian people is because of its International fame. Although it closed its store in Lawrence and the one on the Kansas City Plaza, it seems like the company is doing very well in other places. The company just opened its first European flagship store in London in March 2007 and plans to open more. It plans to open the first Asian store in Japan in 2009, and it’s going to open a first flagship Hollister store in New York City as well. On the Forbes Global 2000, which is the annual ranking of the top 2000 corporations in the world by Forbes magazine this year, it ranks 1391, compared to the rank 1466 last year, it’s moving 75 spots higher. On August 22, 2007, the company said earnings rose 24% in the second quarter, powered by higher sales from more stores.
For International students, the easy way to follow the trend is to go to some stores that they’ve heard of. According to Annie, the store manager of Gap, the customers who comes in this store is a good mix of local people and international people, “I’d say half half,” Annie said. And according to several other retail stores in downtown, like the American Eagle Outfitters and The Buckle, international students who come into their stores also occupies a large percentage of total customers. While one of the local stores, Creation Station, said that there are some international people come in sometimes, but “there is a certain number of local people who come here a lot.”
The population of Lawrence is about 80,000, including 30,000 students from KU, and the number of international students is about 1,650. If half or a lot of its customers who come in to Gap are international students, that means not only international students are a big support of downtown retail stores, but also means most of international students are shopping in retail stores.
“After Abercrombie is closed, I feel like there is almost nothing in downtown right now. I lost one of my best choices,” said Kim.
Knowing that just having Asian or international students as supporters is not enough for a store to keep going, Zhang said, “I hope they are not closing the store in Oak Park mall as well, otherwise even if my friends and I are driving, we have nowhere to go.”