Forever 21 began in Los Angeles on April 21 st 1984. Back
then it was called Fashion 21. By their end of the first year sales has risen
from $35,000 to $700,000. From this success the founder decided to open up a
new store every 6 months. From this the stores name changed from fashion 21 to
Forever 21.The store grew dramatically over in the US and thoughts to go
worldwide started growing. They entered Europe through beginning in the UK. Asked why it had chosen to tackle the UK
market now, executive vice president Larry Meyer said: "We've been around
for over 25 years and there's always cycles within the economy."The
customer always knows they will get great value at Forever 21, so the fact that
it's a difficult time now just..makes our concept potentially more appealing to
people." Asked
why Birmingham, and not London for example, opened first, he said the company
has "to wait and find the right location". Mr Meyer said: "We
felt it was a very unique opportunity to obtain 53,000 sq ft within the
Bullring and that was just coincidental with vacancies."We have been
looking at the UK as our first location within Europe, as a natural point of
takeoff from the United States to a country that speaks English."We came
to Birmingham and the Bullring and decided to make this our first store because
we knew that Birmingham would be a city that we would eventually get to."
Forever 21 have become successful in the UK retail
market as they chose their timing carefully. The store offered value at a good
price in a time of low employment and high numbers of redundancies. Not only
offering affordable up to date products they also brought with their new store employment.
The store offered 250 full time jobs within the new Birmingham store.
Nicole Warr
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