(Hollister)
Hollister has been Abercrombie & Fitch's unsung hero.
The beachy California-themed teen brand has helped Abercrombie & Fitch's parent company reverse negative sales for the first time since 2012.
Sales were up 4% in the most recent quarter, compared with a 2% decline for the namesake brand.
Hollister invited Business Insider to see one of its newly remodeled stores, and it's evident why the company is succeeding while its parent company's namesake brand, Abercrombie, is trying to improve.
"We put the customer at the center of everything that we do today," Abercrombie & Fitch Co. President and Chief Merchandising Officer Fran Horowitz said during a recent store walk through at the Westfield Garden State Plaza in New Jersey.
That's more important than ever, especially considering the ever increasing demands of Gen Z — the generation to which Hollister aims to cater.
First: The company retired its storefront porches for a more modern look, video screens.
(Mallory Schlossberg/Business Insider)
You can't see it, but the company has also reduced the potent scents of its perfumes throughout the stores. (Abercrombie & Fitch is more infamous for the heavy scent of cologne in its stores, but Hollister is guilty of it too.)
Most noticeably, the remodeled stores open up the space, so that sales associates can see shoppers and focus on them, rather than just on their own appearances and how the stores look.
(Mallory Schlossberg/Business Insider)
Horowitz conceded that before the remodeling, the stores were "difficult to shop."
"Before, someone could be in one of the rooms [and] we wouldn't even seem them ... in the stores."
The company is also filtering out incessant heavy promotions. Horowitz pointed out that the lower-priced, discounted items are still there, as they are important for the younger consumers in the store, but they might come back with their parents to buy something more expensive, like outerwear.
(Mallory Schlossberg/Business Insider)
Hollister is also capitalizing on the ever important experience component of shopping. The retailer was the first to adopt a Snapchat geofilter, Horowotiz said. That way, teens can take photos of themselves in the dressing room and send the Snaps — complete with Hollister's continually changing geofilter — and send it to their friends.
"It's something that I think all retailers today are debating," Horowitz said. "You have an opportunity to shop online [but] there's also an experiential and social part of their lives that is still about ... going to the mall." And Gen Z is all about experiences.