The stores target 22-30 year-olds with a lineup of casual apparel centered around jeans, plus cashmere sweaters and accessories such as handbags.
Abercrombie opened two Ruehl stores on Tuesday, at the Woodfield Shopping Center in Chicago and at the Westfield Shoppingtown Garden State Plaza, in Paramus, N.J. The Tampa store was supposed to open at the International Plaza over Labor Day weekend, but the company delayed the opening until this week due to Hurricane Frances, a company spokesman told SCT Newswire. The retailer will open another store in Detroit before the holiday season, and another in the spring, say analysts. It expects to open as many as 700 Ruehl stores nationwide, says Prudential Equity Group, whose team attended a meeting for retail analysts at the new store.
“We thought the store prototype was unique and could serve to widen the appeal of ANF’s brand portfolio across a wider age range,” Prudential analysts wrote in a report.
Abercrombie operates about 361 of its core Abercrombie & Fitch stores and will have a total of 260 Hollister stores open at the end of 2004. The company’s overall square footage should increase by just 14 percent during 2004, according to Prudential.
Abercrombie weaves a fictitious story into the design of its Ruehl stores depicting a German leather goods family that immigrated to America in the 1850s and settled in Greenwich Village. The store façade looks like a brick townhouse, with a sidewalk in front. With 9,000 square feet of space, each store has nine rooms of about 800 square feet of selling space. Many of Ruehl's jean styles are named after Greenwich Village streets, such as Barrow, Waverly and Jane.
Although the company is aiming for a more upscale consumer at Ruehl, Prudential noted that many of the prices were on par with Abercrombie & Fitch.