Yahoo Finance 5 brands that saved themselves
Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) posted a wider-than-expected quarterly loss Thursday as the teen retailer continues to struggle. While same store sales fell less than anticipated, Abercrombie posted its 12th consecutive quarter of negative same-store sales. Abercrombie says it expects to see sales improve over the next year though. The company has already ditched the shirtless greeters at the store, changed its often-criticized hiring policy and stripped logos off its apparel. Leadership is still in question as Abercrombie has been without a CEO since long-time chief executive Michael Jeffries stepped down in December.
While efforts continue at Abercrombie & Fitch, here are five brands that have come back from the brink:
LEGO
LEGO, a privately-owned family business based in Billund, Denmark, was founded in 1932. It grew into a global brand as the plastic brick toys took off with young builders. But LEGO sales began to slump in the 1990s, as video games and cheap Chinese-made toys dominated the toy industry. In an effort to get sales back on track, the company went on a costly "innovation binge" in the early 2000s as author David Robertson put it in his book, Brick by Brick: How LEGO Rewrote the Rules of Innovation and Conquered the Global Toy Industry. Hoping to build the popularity of the LEGO brand, the company launched a line of LEGO-branded children’s wear and an entire division of the company was charged with pitching media ideas-- books, movies, and television. At the same time, LEGO’s bread and butter, its building sets for kids, became increasingly complex—more parts, more difficult to build. Those efforts further hurt the brand. In 2004, the company named Jørgen Knudstorp as CEO. Knudstorp simpified products and more closely tied product innovation to market research and user feedback. LEGO has since seen resurgence in its core products and opened retail stores; Sales and profits have soared.
Apple
Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne founded Apple Computer on April 1, 1976. Within four years, the company's Apple II became a wildly popular home computer. Sales reached $117 million in 1980, and the company went public. With Apple growing quickly, Jobs brought in an experienced CEO, John Sculley from PepsiCo (PEP). The relationship eventually soured and Jobs was ousted from Apple in 1985. Later that year, Jobs founded another computer company, NeXT, which developed a powerful computer based on the Unix operating system. In 1997, Apple bought out NeXT, and brought Jobs back in to lead the company. To bring Apple back from the brink, Jobs got rid of unsuccessful products and reignited the culture of innovation the company was founded on. What came next was the iPod, iTunes, iPhone, MacBook, and iPad. Apple was just named the world's most valuable brand according to Millward Brown’s 2015 gobal brand power list. The tech giant now has an estimated value of $247 billion.
Priceline
Priceline (PCLN) was founded in 1997 by entrepreneur Jay Walker, and quickly became one of the Internet darlings of the late 1990s. Its gimmick-- “name your price” for airfare and hotel rooms-- took off with consumers. But the company nearly went bust when the dot-com bubble burst; Priceline shares fell to single digits. In 2002, the company named Jeffrey Boyd as CEO. With Boyd at the helm, the company eliminated booking fees, focused on hotel reservations over airline bookings, and aggressively expanded in Europe and Asia. The company acquired other travel sites like Booking.com, Kayak and Rentalcars.com. Today, Priceline is one of the world's biggest travel sites and its stock has soared. The company is now taking a gamble on China, investing heavily in Chinese travel service provider Ctrip.com.
Best Buy
The turnaround is still underway at Richfield, Minnesota-based Best Buy (BBY) but Wall Street is impressed by what it's seen so far. Best Buy was founded in 1966 and was called the Sound of Music before changing its name to Best Buy in 1983. Despite its rise as a leading national chain, the bricks-and-mortar retailer was starting to feel heat from the online world. As Amazon.com (AMZN) grew in popularity with electronic shoppers, concerns grew that the electronics retail giant was going to go the way of Circuit City. The company brought in Hubert Joly as CEO in 2012. Two years into a turnaround effort, the electronics retail put a focus on its online business. Its ship-from-store concept-- now in 1,400 store locations-- has been a success for the company. And despite a 5% sales drop in consumer electronics, Best Buy has seen two consecutive quarters of growth in same-store sales. That’s something that hasn't happened in nearly five years.
Burberry
The British clothing company saw its iconic check pattern fade out of favor with luxury consumers. Burberry was founded in 1856 by 21-year old dressmaker Thomas Burberry. The company grew to become a prominent luxury brand. But oversaturation of the market due to expansion and licensing deals hurt the company. Burberry brought in American fashion vet Angela Ahrendts in July, 2006. The turnaround was expensive as the company bought back 23 licenses Burberry had sold to allow other firms to put its signature check print on everything. The company also simplified the product line and put a renewed focus on the company’s trademark: the Burberry trench coat. Burberry also put an early focus on digital, giving the luxury brand a boost online with a younger audience. That helped Burberry become the first luxury brand to hit 10 million likes on Facebook.
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