Founded in 1984, Forever 21 has quickly became an iconic retail store for teenagers within the past few years. Although their items appeal to their target segment, there are plenty of other retail stores that offers extremely similar items. Why is it that Forever 21 became such a big retailer not only in North America, but throughout Asia, Europe and other parts of the world?

Presentation of the store

Forever 21, although the products are offered at a relatively low-mid price range, has consistent store fixtures with all their locations. These include marble floors, luxurious ceramic dishes with jewelries, and white chandeliers.

Supply Chain

Teenagers have the need to always follow the trends of their role models, peers, and celebrities : their taste is continuously changing. Because of this, Forever 21’s supply chain challenges themselves to have fast and efficient product delivery. This means having new items every week, and putting necessary “out of season” items on sale so they can get rid of old items fast, and promote the new items.

Merchandising

This store does not only offer “casual clothing”. It is a one-stop shop for any occasion that a customer needs. Forever 21 stores offer diverse range of product line, from formal dresses, casual wear, to activewear and tech accessories. This gives the customers an opportunity to match more products with their initial purpose, which ,as a result, increases sales.

Branding

It’s probably safe to say majority of teenagers in North America alone recognize a Forever 21 store even if it didn’t have the sign in front of the store. Their yellow shopping bag has been used since the initial launch of the company, which created a unique way to recognize their brand.

There are so many more other factors that leads to Forever 21’s success. It comes as no surprise that this store increased its sales by 82% from 2007 to 2011 according to Reuters, while other retailers are having difficulty expanding their sales.

Marketing and Customer Service.
Customer Service and Marketing. 
For some odd reason, these two are inseparable, and go in hand in hand. As Pamela Vaughan mentions in her blog post, these two “should go together like milk and cookies”

She outlined 7 reasons they these two MUST go together as such:

1) For Better Social Media Support

2) For Content Creation Ideas

3) For a Deeper Understanding of Buyer Personas

4) For Setting Customer Expectations

5) For Unified Messaging & Communications

6) For PR/Marketing Promotion of Customer Success & Happiness

7) For Informing Product Marketing Initiatives

These reasons without explaining further, sounds pretty basic and self-explanatory. Personally, the points that stuck out to me the most was “Deeper Understanding of Buyer Personas” and “Setting Customer Expectations”.

As a person who has worked in a retail store, I have experience with being the first hand direct contact with the customers. If I learned anything from my experience in retail is that understanding and listening to the customers is crucial to the success of any business. For example, I can be very knowledgeable about the products I’m selling, but if I don’t know what the customer’s need is there is no use. The ability to connect and understand a customer’s need is so crucial that even if I do not have the best knowledge about the products I’m trying sell, the customer will leave with a positive attitude.

Similarly, setting customer expectations also means I am creating a lifetime customer. Even if today or next week a customer might not purchase a product, giving her the best experience and customer service will encourage her to make a purchase sometime in the future.

Although my experience in retail gives a very limited perspective on the operations of the corporation side of a business, I believe a lot of the marketing done is no use without excellent customer service.