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Abercrombie removed its shirtless models and turned up the lights in stores, leading to the biggest retail comeback of the year (ANF)

Abercrombie's comeback has been almost four years in the making, but it finally came to fruition in 2018.

Abercrombie's new outdoorsy look.
  • Business Insider has crowned the company retail's biggest comeback of 2018.

As a result, the teen-turned-millennial-focused brand, which counts Hollister and Abercrombie Kids as its sister brands, has been crowned Business Insider's biggest comeback in retail this year.

Last month, its parent company reported its fifth consecutive quarter of positive same-store sales growth; the Abercrombie brand alone had its fourth consecutive quarter of positive same-store sales growth.

At the time, analysts praised the company for being on the steady road to recovery. The company's stock soared as much as 25% shortly after it reported earnings.

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"The recovery at Abercrombie & Fitch is still a work in progress. However, turning around a once very troubled brand is far from easy," Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, wrote in a note to clients at the time.

CEO Fran Horowitz has been leading a turnaround effort since she took the helm in

Since 2014, the brand has made some dramatic changes to its stores by removing the dark shutters

operates businesses in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York, to offer pop-up Abercrombie shops at some of its hotels.

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While some stores have had the lights turned up, for others, it's lights out. The company has trimmed its store fleet substantially since 2010, closing 450 stores across all brands. A spokesperson for Abercrombie told Business Insider that two-thirds of those closings were Abercrombie and Abercrombie Kids stores. It plans to close 40 more stores by the end of the year.

It has downsized other stores and since 2017 opened 16 new prototype stores that have more of a boutique feel, with curated collections of clothing and luxurious fitting rooms with seating areas and charging stations.

  • We visited dozens of stores this year, and these were the messiest by far
  • We visited a lot of department stores in 2018. Here's which one was the best to shop at.

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