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August 26, 2025
Does Abercrombie Kids Have a Big Wholesale Opportunity?
Timed for back-to-school selling, Abercrombie & Fitch announced a series of licensing partnerships that will bring the Abercrombie Kids brand to third-party retailers for the first time, including at Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, Macy’s, and Dick’s Sporting Goods in the U.S.
Overseas, Abercrombie Kids products will reach several department stores: Galeries Lafayette in France, KadeWe in Germany, and El Corte Ingles in Spain.
Abercombie said the available offerings will include a “full range of styles” for boys and girls, available in sizes 5 to 18.
Abercombie said, “This global expansion allows us to meet customers where they are and continue building meaningful connections with families around the world. We’re excited to see Abercrombie Kids reach new markets, grow with our customers and bring even more kids into the brand experience.”
The expansion comes as the overall Abercrombie banners has undergone a vibrant turnaround in recent years, with same-store sales up 16% in 2024, 35% in 2023, and 11% in 2022.
Abercrombie Joins Nordstrom and Others in Moving Into Third-Party Territory
It’s still rare to see retailers selling at third-party retailers, particularly competitors.
In 2016, Nordstrom started selling an edited assortment of J.Crew merchandise at select Nordstrom full-line stores, as well as online.
“This was an easy decision,” said Millard Drexler, J.Crew’s chairman and CEO at the time. “Nordstrom is the perfect partner because we both share the same high standards of customer service and store experience. Additionally, we are known for exceptional design, quality and style, which we know will appeal to the Nordstrom customer.”
Pete Nordstrom, Nordstrom’s co-president, said at the time, “We know our customers love J.Crew and we’re excited to be offering this coveted brand in our stores and online. Partnering with quality brands like J.Crew that have exclusive distribution is part of our long-term strategic agenda.”
L.L.Bean opened its first wholesale accounts in 2018 and in 2023 added Dillard’s to its mix of wholesale partners in the U.S. that included Nordstrom, Staples, and Scheels in the U.S.
The 113-year-old outdoor retailer said in a statement in 2023, “These wholesale partnerships will enable L.L.Bean to offer a curated assortment of goods through established, trusted retailers, providing customers in more locations across the U.S. the opportunity to interact directly with the brand’s iconic products, which have traditionally been most accessible online and through the L.L.Bean catalog.”
Other examples include Kohl’s selling both Lands’ End and Eddie Bauer product under licenses. A trailblazer has been Urban Outfitters, which established its Free People Wholesale division in 1984, with its overall wholesale business reaching $275 million last year.
Similarly to retailer concerns when opening up direct selling on Amazon, retailers embarking on wholesale partnerships risk by letting a third party manage the selling experience as well as sending their customers to a competitor.
Discussion Questions
Is Abercrombie Kids’ partnerships plan to enter wholesale a ‘win-win’ for both Abercrombie & Fitch and the third-party retailers?
Are there major or minor risks for either side?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Georganne Bender
Principal, KIZER & BENDER Speaking
Frank Margolis
Executive Director, Growth Marketing & Business Development, Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions
Neil Saunders
Managing Director, GlobalData
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In the US, the kidswear market was worth $82.1 billion last year, and Abercrombie & Fitch has a very small share of that spend. This leaves considerable headroom for growth. Expanding through wholesale is a sensible strategy: it provides relatively fast access to new customers and requires far less capital than opening additional stores – of which Abercrombie Kids still has relatively few. Of course the trade-off is a slight loss of brand control. That said, in the Macy’s locations I’ve visited, standards for presentation and range execution have been solid. More broadly, wholesale kids fits neatly into Abercrombie’s wider strategy of finding new growth drivers beyond its core businesses.
While Abercrombie has come a long way in its evolution – no longer the proud-to-be- exclusive brand of the 1990s/2000s – it’s still expensive, and thus by definition exclusive. Thus, we’ll need to wait and see how deep the discounts go to see if it can become a more mainstream brand and reap financial upside from this endeavor.
The short answer? I don’t really know: normally it’s to the advantage of both a retailer and a supplier to establish a relationship; but when a supplier establishes relationships with many vendors, it seems like a potential fallacy of composition, since much of the value lies in exclusivity, which, obviously, is diminished.
The overseas sales are even more amibiguous: how well do iconic American brands sell nowadays ?
“The overseas sales are even more ambiguous: how well do iconic American brands sell nowadays ?”
Not well. I just got back from Europe. The anti-America (not Americans) sentiment is extreme.
“The flogging will continue until the
morale“imbalance“improves”Smart move. There are some consumers who still cringe at Abercrombie’s history. Shopping for the brand at Nordstrom might be easier for those customers than shopping in Abercrombie’s actual stores.
Though the updated Abercrombie stores look great (you can see the merchandise!) and the odor and objectified kids are gone. I would not be concerned if my 19-year-old daughter was shopping there.
Me, either, but that doesn’t mean my millennial kids are eager to shop there. It was a lot in the early to
mid 2000s when they were the core customers and they remember that.
This is a careful distribution expansion move. Nordstrom, Bloomingdale’s, and Macy’s aren’t chosen for volume—they’re selected for brand credibility transfer. I expect short-term success with revenue growth. Abercrombie & Fitch has to walk a growth tightrope; if wholesale succeeds too well, it risks becoming a wholesale brand rather than a premium brand available through the wholesale channel. Distribution strategy cannot be divorced from brand strategy; if they had launched wholesale under a different brand name entirely, instead of “Abercrombie Kids,” they would have created “A&F Junior.”