ptember 2019, after global sales for the brand had dropped by 32 per cent year-over-year (YoY). In February 2020, Authentic Brands Group bought the Forever 21 brand name out of bankruptcy in February 2020 and licensed it to Sparc Group. However, Authentic Brands Group’s acquisition has not been the magic bullet Forever 21 needed it to be.  In fact, Jamie Salter, Authentic Brands Group CEO, called it “probably the biggest mistake I made” at a press conference in January 2024.  This week, just over a year after Salter’s admission, Forever 21 announced that it would be laying off nearly 700 employees in California and Pennsylvania. In response to a query about the layoffs, a spokesperson for Forever 21’s operating company, which licenses the brand in the US, stated in an email that the retailer “continues to explore strategic options while also looking at ways to reduce costs across our operations and optimise our store footprint”. Factors that contributed to Forever 21’s downfall Simply put, fast fashion retailers like Shein and Temu, have made it increasingly difficult for Forever 21 to keep pace with rapidly shifting trends. As Global Data’s managing director Neil Saunders explained, “Forever 21 has been battered by the rise of Shein and to a certain extent Temu. It has also faced competition from other mall players like Zara, Uniqlo, and others. Basically, the competitive bar is now set a lot higher in fast fashion, and Forever 21 has had trouble getting over it.” In October 2023, the retailer inked a deal with Shein to design, manufacture and distribute a line of Forever 21 products, seemingly taking the adage “if you can’t beat them, join them” to heart. However, despite this move, and the efforts of former CEO Winnie Park, who led a shift in focus to Gen Z consumers and pop-culture influencers through brand collaborations with Wicked and the Compton Cowboys before leaving to take the top job at discount retailer Five Below in December 2024, Forever 21 has failed to keep up with the desires of today’s shopper.  Some retail experts like Saunders are doubtful about the retailer’s ability to recover its former status. Others, like CI&T’s director of retail strategy Melissa Minkow, are a bit more optimistic about Forever 21’s future.  Can Forever 21 ever make a comeback? “The truth is that Forever 21 has lost any sense of personality. It has massive stores which are far too big for its needs and which are full of product that lacks an identity and is nothing special. It’s the kind of generic ‘stuff’ that many shoppers are happy to pass on or which they can find much cheaper online,” Saunders told Inside Retail.  “I am not sure there is a pathway for the brand to get back to the significant status it once had,” Saunders elaborated. “The best it can hope for is survival in some more modest form.”  To achieve a turnaround, Minkow cautioned, Forever 21 will have to right the several wrongs that led to this situation in the first place. For example, she noted that Forever 21 has a history of oscillating between higher and lower prices for fast-fashion pieces of its quality.  “There needs to be a consistent pricing for quality strategy that warrants the spend,” she said. Secondly, Minkow said the brand overly invested in bricks-and-mortar when it needed to invest more in digital operations. “Their website doesn’t offer the most exciting or well-curated display of their offering. [Also] the merchandising doesn’t have a seamless flow, the product imagery isn’t as visually pleasing as it could be, it’s not a website that is satisfying to browse and discover,” she said. “I do believe Forever 21 could still make a comeback, especially given the direction the economy is headed and the fact that consumers will continue to look for the lowest prices.”