The Ben and Emil Show - BAES 64: The best stock of the last 2 years isn't Nvidia

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

In the early 2000s Abercrombie & Fitch was untouchable. Record profits, clothes that everyone wanted, and meticulous branding that was as effective as it was evocative. But times changed, and Abercrombie didn't. Teetering on the brink of bankruptcy in the 2010s, their turnaround story is nothing short of a miracle. With their stock up over 900% the last five years, we had to dive in. Leave a comment to be featured as the comment of the week next week! Head to https://benandemilshow.com for this week's bonus episode and to support the show! :) __ ZBIOTICS: Stock up on pre-alcohol now! Go to https://zbiotics.com/BAES to get 15% off your first order when you use BAES at checkout. If you're unsatisfied for any reason, they'll refund your money, no questions asked. MEUNDIES: Summer is here! Be prepared with MeUndies. Get 20% off your first order, plus free shipping, at https://meundies.com/baes __ Latest MEATBALL SPECIAL HERE: https://youtu.be/bF9FbRUtyrM Last week's episode HERE: https://youtu.be/TtMzvVzHk7M Watch the latest Ben & Emil On HERE: https://youtu.be/ZgLZQZ8oeQI This episode was shot and edited by Connor Rousseau / @ conrad_roussrad Follow us on instagram! @ benandemilshow @ bencahn @ emilderosa and @ conrad_roussrad Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wait, I can't tell if you're kidding. Yes, I'm kidding. Oh, well, you know, some people are in their underpants. I'm not kidding. No, I'm joking. I am. I'm joking. I wouldn't do that. I did. I did that. I really don't know anymore. I'm joking. I obviously wouldn't do that. But I did.

Clearly. I didn't. Wait. Did you or did you not accidentally crack your pants? I didn't. Okay. But I did actually do it. no i didn't i definitely didn't do it i'm looking down town with me tell me what's going on tell me what's going on

oh man hey guys we're away right now we're away right now We're on vacations. No, we're not. Well, I'm probably back by now. I don't know when this is going to air. Nobody actually knows. So for that very reason, we're actually postponing the comment of the week because we don't know. We might even be dead by now.

It's very possible. One of us could die between now and the time that this air. Very likely both of us are dead at this point. Yeah. Wow. So Emil's gone. Emile is gone. He's, where do you think you are right now?

I think I'm in Greece. I might be in Monorca right now I'm in Monorca right now and I'll probably be I think I'll be back I think I'm on an airplane right now no no no because this comes out on Thursdays

and I will be back so I'll be back and I'll be I'm here in spirit who cares what's going on I love watching his little gear I don't want to stop him and that's the thing here at the Ben and Emile show

we don't believe in taking a week off So if we actually do take a week off, which I just said we don't believe in, we record in advance and we struggle to, we come up with ideas for more evergreen things that we can put out. And I've been wanting to do this story for quite some times. He's been bugging me about it for months, years. Two years, I would say. It's actually, it kind of does tick me off because you pointed this out to me. I know. I think about a year and a half ago, you said Abacrombie and Fitch clothes are actually kind of tight now.

And I was like, what? I did not say it like that. Yeah, you did. I said that they got good basics. I said, you know, it's surprising because the company has been ridiculed. It has been chastied. The mockery of fashionistas all over the country. But then you go, kind of a pretty good t-shirt.

Yeah. That's it. That's all they got. They turned into a t-shirt company. Spoilers. No, they didn't. In this episode, we're going to be talking about how did Abercrombie and Fitch go from being on the cusp of failure to one of the best performing stocks in the last year? They even beat out Envidia.

The one that everybody talks about? No, no, no, no, no, no. Envibbidia is nothing. This is Abercrombian bitch. Okay? Abercrombian bitch. Invigia is nothing when it comes to Abercrombian bitch. InVidia, I don't know what this is.

I don't know what this is. It's all about Abercrombie and Fitch. And Abercrombie and Fitch is here to stay. It's here to stay. It's like Pinterest, baby. It never goes down. Basics. They got good basics.

Actually, what is Pinterest at right now? Pinterest's stock. I bet it's at 38. Nope, 31. Wow, man. Wow. Holy crap. Oh, speaking of stocks, I had a really upsetting one.

There was this ticker that I found. You guessed it on Moomoo. So be sure to go in the description and download yourself some moo-mooh baby but uh man i left like 50 grand on the table with the stock yeah yeah really upset about it uh okay anyway let's talk about abercrombie shall we should we go should we go back in time let's go back in time it is very funny because we were uh we were alive and well for the for the for the for the peak of this this was our teenage years yeah and preteen for me Ben's older than me. Ben's like 43?

Yeah, I'm about 43. Oh, God, is he doing it again? Is Phil doing it again? I think he did it by accident. Abrecrumbe, for me, was very intimidating. I never wore it. I didn't think that it was for me. So their marketing at the time effectively worked.

I was not, I knew. I just knew. I'm like, I'm not an Abercrombie guy. I'm not an Abercrombie guy. I'm not, I don't know. Here's how I got into it. Okay, so there was, there was, kid versions of stores right you had gap kids you had but when you're a kid you're like

i don't want to fucking wear the kid stuff yeah i'm not a kid i'm 11 i'm an adult yeah i got pubs now and the nice thing about wait did you have pubs at 11 i don't know i'd have to check the tape okay cool the nice thing about abercrombie and fitch was their kids thing wasn't abracrombie for kids they just left off the and fitch it was abercrombie and you're like that's for I'm a man. And then they had Hollister for the high schoolers and Abercrombie and Fitch for the college kids is something I learned. I did not know that they were all.

I didn't know that Hollister was another one that I did not feel cool. No, Abercrombie and Fitch was for high school too. Yeah, yeah, true. It definitely was. But they were intentionally marketing it toward college kids. Sure. But, yeah, the whole mall ecosystem was like a strange, it was like, where do you shop? because there's different clicks and stuff.

Did you guys have Paxon? Oh, did we have Paxon? Okay, well, because you said Tilly's. Well, that's where I shopped. And for me, Tilly's was like a, oh, was Tilly's not like Paxon? Tilly's was, but I just remember thinking, I got to get T-shirts with skateboard brands on them. I need this.

Right, so that's what happened to me. When I was a kid, I was like, I'll shop at Abercrombie. I'll be like a, if I got to wear these goofy clothes, I'll do it. And then... What good... You mean it? I feel like being a kid is just so embarrassing. You're like, I don't want to wear these clothes.

You're like... You just want to be cool, but you don't know how to do it. You're too young to buy cigarettes. You're too young to buy cigarettes. You're being forced to shop at Gap Kids. Or, you know, we'd go to Marshalls, too. Marshalls was kind of sick because you would get like... We were a Mervyn's family.

Is that like Marshall's? It's like below J.C. Penny. but marshals is that marshals is it's not even department store it's like where they it's like all the shit that doesn't sell yeah oh so you get brand you get Nike adidas yeah umbro remember um bro of course oh marshals was full of umbrose sick uh but it was all the shit that didn't sell so you got all these like weird knockoff nikes and um but then the mall but then the mall then the mall you got your Abercrombies, your Gaps, your Banana Republics, your Old Navy. Your sinabuns.

Your sinabuns. And it was like, what kind of boy are you? Yeah, it was just Tilly's and J.C. Penny. J.C. Penny and Mervins for pants because they were 12 bucks or whatever when they were on sale. And they're just big white tube socks. Jesus Christ. But I also distinctly remember buying an Abercrombie shirt that said, like, it would have sexual innuendo jokes that I didn't understand. Yeah, we'll get to those.

I would wear them. You're getting trouble from time to time. Well, the biggest thing was it was, it was a brand for white people. It was a brand for, I remember it being a brand for the water polo players and all the white handsome. Wow, my man is from California. We did not have a water polo team. Really? That's surprising.

Seems like a very New England thing. I grew up in New Jersey. Right, but it's still part of the New England ecosystem. The New England diaspora. Yeah. But the Christian kids. who all went to the same cool surf church that I didn't belong to that I was like

sort of friends with at school but they would all hang out together outside of school and I was like can I just can I hang I'll go to church I guess they all wore Abercrombie I remember my friend Laura wore Hollister and Abercrombie all the time and

the magazine ads were all really really hot guys that I was like damn I don't look like that this sucks the funny thing this sucks The ads, and especially the bags, the bags had the boys on them. These just chiseled, blonde. 20-year-old boys.

No clothes, though. You know, you'd think they'd want to sell the clothes. Yeah, they would have jeans, no shirts. They weren't really interested in selling the tops, I guess. So the other fun thing about the Abercrombie experience back then is, and I remember witnessing this and also just being destroyed, was at some of the store, at a lot of, I think maybe all the stores, They would have models out front to lure young women in, I guess.

They were just like hot guys with their shirts off. You can't say lure young women in any more. They wanted the young women to come in and shop. They had just shirtless guys standing up. Imagine going to the mall in today's day and age and seeing two 19, 20-year-old guys with their shirts off just standing there just, well, it's all. All you call in a shop. I would call me. I found Hollister the most terrifying one

Because for some reason Abercrombie and Fitch when you were in there You could like see the rest of them all Hollister was like this weird void You could just see the entrance And then once you're in there it's just loud And they have the same smells Abercrombie obviously had the smell too

You're being blasted with it, the clone But Hollister when you were in there It was like you left the mall You're in a new space It was Yeah I'll put it to you this way. Hollister was for brunettes and Abercrombie was for blondes.

I think that that's how I think. I think of like Marissa from the O.C., she's a Hollister girly. And Abercrombie was for her boyfriend in the first season. The blonde guy. Oh, Jesus Christ. I had moved down to Paxone at this point. Well, and around that same time. I was like, I need to have skate brands on my clothes.

Yeah, I needed to have. I'm going to get my fucking ass cake. I needed to have puns. I remember specifically there was a shirt that I had that had an almond joy, the candy bar, but they had photoshopped it to say alien joy, and there were these little aliens on it, and I just thought that was the coolest thing. It's so twisted how fucked up a little kid's brain is, a little boy's brain. But around that same time, who could forget, we're just trying to capture a moment here.

There was the song, Summer Girls by LFO. Do yourself a favor and listen to this. We'll play it in the bonus, in fact. but I just got to read to you the chorus which is as follows New kids on the block had a bunch of hits Sing it baby Chinese food makes me sick

and I think it's fly when girls stop by for the summer for the summer I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch I'd take her if I had one wish but she's been gone since that summer since that summer It really was a cultural moment I remember multiple friends

specifically having either A.F. or like Fitch in their screen names. Oh, yeah. Well, Jesus Christ. It was a cultural signifier. Wait, I got to read to you the one verse. Hip-hop Marmalade, Spick, and Span, met you one summer, and it all began. You're the best girl that I ever did see. The Great Larry Bird, Jersey, 33. I mean, that's just good. When you take a sip, you buzz like a hornet. Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets. Yeah, the Chinese food thing. I'm sorry, call me Willie Whistle, because I keep, go up. Call me Willie Whistle because I can't speak, baby. Something in your eyes really drove me crazy. Now I can't forget you, and it makes me mad. Left one day and never came back.

Oh, my God. Stayed all summer, then went back home. McCulley Colkin wasn't home alone. Fell deep in love, but now we ain't speaking. Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton. Dude. well this is my favorite part when i met you i said my name is rich you look like a girl from i'm crumb you bitch wow it gets it gets name checked twice oh my god i forgot about that i just love

they're just tossing around nonsense right they're not even they're not even connected fell deep in love but now we ain't speaking michael j fox was alex p keaton that was a character that michael j fox played on fucking family ties christ i can't wait to play that song Hey guys, we've got to talk to you about this game-changing product for a second. It's called Zbiotics, the pre-alcohol. It's what you take. You use it before you have a night out with drinks, right? Or if you're like us and on vacation right now,

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Les Wexner. Quick side note about Victoria's Secret. Really sad story. the guy who founded Victoria's Secret sold it he just wanted a place to buy his wife some lingerie and he felt really awkward about it he's like there's no place I can get my wife

some sexy underwear he created Victoria's Secret he sells it to it must have been the limited for like $4 million and within a couple years they're fucking raking it in hundreds of millions of dollars

he killed himself I think he jumped off the gold game which I don't understand at the point he sold it he was probably getting I mean four million dollars there's probably a ton of money

he doesn't sound like he had any ambitions to do that just fucking take your money shut up yeah uh you got four million bucks to buy your wife all the brassiers you want yeah don't kill yourselves folks but so they also own express and then the transformation was underway

because in 1992 they hired an absolute sicko an absolute mike jeffre fucking weirdo this guy So in an interview, he once said, in every school, in every school there are cool and popular kids and not so cool kids. We go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive, all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.

A lot of people don't belong in our clothes. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely. There's this interview with him from 2006 that I read over, and he just loves. he's obsessed with like water polo playing looking young he kept emphasizing a good attitude just like yeah i'm positive which is great he likes a specific boy he likes a specific type of boy he took over in 1992 as CEO he was there until 2014 and he basically turned it into the abercumbian fitch that you and we all know yes he turned it into his whole thing was that like elite exclusive

we want this to be for a very specific really a smart branding guy he leaned heavily into the white preppy look, the pop collar, polo shirts, the jeans, and he marketed them for cool kids. Not me, though.

I was wearing alien joy shirts from fucking tillies. I was a poser, I guess, because I wore skate stuff and I could barely kickflip. I remember I kickflipped once. Everyone is a poser.

That's why it's so embarrassing. I remember being like, you know, I'm going to shop at Paxon, like some of these people. And I remember getting little meal I'm going to shop a Paxson like some of these people

getting like a Billabong sweatshirt and being like this is so fucking sick no one's ever looked as sick as I do and then getting to school and literally seeing three separate people with the same sweatshirt and just being like oh okay so we're all just going to the same mall

and it's a fucking there's only so many sweatshirts you can get the element one you can get the quick silver one or the billabong one world industries yeah and now we all Pendent trucks wearing the same fucking shit

Yeah, God There's no way to You can't be a cool You can't be cool Teenagers aren't cool As cool as they think they are And they want to make fun of kids And they want to be like

Oh, you're not doing cool shit You're not cool if you're a teenager There are some cool teenagers The only cool teenagers are ones Who wouldn't be considered cool by other teenagers The only cool teenage is a dead teenager The only cool teenagers Are ones who aren't getting wrapped up

In any of that stuff and like doing their own thing and they're the fucking nerds those are the cool ones yeah chess club kids uh dare i say tennis players say it no tennis players say it from your chess team no actually the golf team is full of fucking the golf team is not cool yeah they're not cool yeah they're not cool i didn't make the golf team because i broke my pinky before the big um the big like uh tryouts broke my fucking pinky stupid i should have never broke my pinky i'm trying i can't remember where it was, but there was something... Think.

Someone was doing, like, a retrospective and, like, how hipsters came to be and all that stuff, and someone was talking about how... Was it Brad Tremel? He's great. No, I don't even know who that is. Oh, I'll tell you later. It sounds weirdly familiar. Maybe it was him, but they said, you know, was anyone cool as a teenager sending pictures

and everyone sent in these goofy pictures, but then he had... There was, like, three guys where I was like, wow, you figured it out as a teenager. You were 16 and you look cool. Actually, teenagers were cool in the early 90s. I think there, I've said it. So anyway, the CEO was a known weirdo. They had this campus in, so at the peak, this is like peak Abercrombie, early 2000s up to like maybe the Great Recession.

My friend worked there after college, and I remember him telling me about the campus and being like, what? They had this campus in Ohio that was basically, it sounds like it was just one big, I would think that it would be on the East Coast because it sounded like a farmhouse surf, beach house place people walk

everybody's wearing abaccombe people are playing for it's like a little college campus but for a full purpose clothing design brand they've got the models walking around people designing shit the cafeteria

which used to be like a weird nod to was it Les Wexner but they've like scrubbed all the weird Epstein stuff especially with what's come out about Mike Jeffries should we

Speaking of him being weird, he also is just a weird looking. He's just a really, I've got some pictures here. Audio listener, imagine a guy who stepped on a beehive and he just got absolutely mauled by bees. I like to say, imagine Gary Busey was like, fuck it. I'm going to try to get plastic surgery. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's pretty good. And then he went to LA's best plastic surgeon and he came out and he's like, did I do it?

And we were all like, uh, yeah. No, the surgeon, I thought you were going to say the surgeon was a little drunk or high. Well, Gary- Oh, I thought you wanted to look fucked up. There's only so much you can do with Gary Bucy's face. I was going to say he looks like a guy stepped on a hive of bees, and he just, his face never, the swelling never went down. He just looks swollen.

He looks, he looks small. Anywho, so this guy's a fucking weirdo, and in this article, they talk about how he would, like, walk through revolving doors twice. He never passed employees on stairwells. He parked his Porsche at the same angle in the parking lot, and he wore lucky shoes when reading financial reports. It was his flip-flops. Yeah, his flip-flops.

Even in winter he would wear flip-flops. There was something, people didn't know very much about him, but there were certain details that were shared. Like, for example, he had a photo of a toned male torso hanging over the fireplace in his bedroom. Sounds kind of hot, man. That would turn me on. Well, I think it did turn him on.

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Get 20% off your first order plus free shipping at meundies.com slash bays. That's meundies. com slash bays for 20% off plus free shipping. Meandies. Comfort from the outside end. That was the thing. A lot has come out about him since. In the past few years, there's a horny guy.

Very horny. Yeah, but like criminally and psychologically. One for the record books, levels of horny. So when he left, he got about $25 million payout. As CEOs do they, you know, they start running a company into the ground and they're like, you know, you need to leave, but we're going to give you an insane amount of money for what you've done here. And then he was also getting a million dollars a year just as part of his retirement plan. they there's been a big push to get the company to stop paying him that and they finally stopped paying that million dollars a year because there's been a huge uh huge stories about him

where at least a dozen guys have come forward uh from these early days of him basically running a sex trafficking ring um you can never have anything nice honestly i mean the more the more we look into anything it's like is it is every industry just run on sex crime i'm not even uh I'm not sure. It might be a prerequisite. Not any of our sponsors, that's for sure. Yeah, all of them are probably on the up and up. But, I mean, it's really dark and heavy.

There's a couple of podcasts and documentaries that, like, the BBC did a whole huge series about it and talked to some of the victims and everything. So if you want to go into it, you can watch it. But basically, he was, they would prey on younger models who wanted to get into the modeling industry. Obviously, modeling for Abercrombie and Fitch would be, huge boon to your modeling career and so there were there was a whole system there were young models who were working for this guy james jacobson he's a very disgusting figure i mean it's almost overwritten he's literally missing his nose he doesn't have a nose this guy and he would wear

this kind of specialty thing he had made over his nose they wore goblin nose and he thought that would look normal he would basically have young models send him new recruits and that would be considered a tryout and which would basically just be performing sex acts on him blowing him whatever and then you get through to the next level which would be going to these uh it's i mean it's awful but i mean it's worth noting what was going on at this company uh mike jeffreys was also married he got married in the in the 70s he had he had an adult son at this point but he was like open secret dating this man this british man matt smith uh and so once you got passed by james or jim jacobson uh you would end up going to

these parties with mike jeffreys and matt smith where you would be uh where you would either be performing sex acts sex on them or with other models who got invited and uh yeah they have all this testimony about guys who got drugged and don't really even know what was happening. People, I mean, it's awful. People waking up with condoms left inside of them. Jesus Christ. I mean, it's fucking unbelievable. Well, here's a little light-hearted controversy that I guess in 2002 they had thongs

that they sold at Abercrombie for middle school girls that said eye candy and wink wink printed on the front. And when asked about this, Mike Jeffries said, quote, that was a bunch of bullshit. People said we were cynical that we were sexualizing little girls, but you know what? I still think those are cute underwear for little girls. I think anybody who gets on a bandwagon about thongs for little girls is crazy. There's so much craziness about sex in this country. I can see getting upset about letting your little girl hang out with a bunch of old perves.

But why would you let your girl hang out with a bunch of old perves? Dude. I know, man. This guy was pretty fucked up. And around the same time that they had those thongs for girls, they released famously, one of their more famous offensive t-shirts was it was this, it says Wong Brothers Laundry Service, two Wongs Can Make It White. I remember this shirt.

Yeah, because you wore it, right? I think you said you did. No, I didn't. They also, for so. I did not wear that shirt, but I did. I wore, I thought it was funny. I think I didn't quite understand what any of it meant, but I understood what it was referencing,

like that it was referencing sex. So like they had shirts that would say, you know, on the back, so if that was a joke about a Chinese restaurant or something like that, on the back it would be called Quicky Car Wash and it would have some kind of illustration. And then on the front, it would say, want a quickie? And I, I, I would.

Sounds like cookie. well maybe I said it wrong want a quickie like quick sex basically and I didn't really understand what it meant I kind of think I knew it was kind of suggestive and I thought that was cool

and then I remember I think I wore it to school got in trouble and a teacher being like do you know what it means and I was like yeah and it was like well what does it mean and I was just like I yeah it's like

and I just was so embarrassed I was like fuck I don't understand if their whole thing was making like really cool all-American stuff why did they need to do these fucking weird t-shirts like here's one it's all relative in West Virginia

it's basically calling people in West Virginia fuck their cousins and stuff and then that one's funny I would wear that this one's my favorite this one makes no sense to me it's an Olympia it's a male gymnast doing an L-sit in the air on rings and it says L is for

loser. Like they're making fun a gymnast, like they're going gymnast loser? I also didn't quite realize that they kind of like invented the ironic t-shirt. I guess because then they had, well they got... Not invented it. I think they, I'm sure they were... Perfected is what you're saying. Yeah, they like popularized it too.

Because you wore these. No, I didn't. I definitely wore some goofy uh... Sexual innuendo stuff. Right. But they weren't all like that. They also had very regular hooded sweatshirts. The cargo shorts were a bit.

Do you remember the cargo shorts they had? Definitely guilty of wearing some cargo shorts. So they also had shirts that said, gentlemen prefer tiggle bitties, bad girls chug, good girls drink quickly. And because of these shirts, there was a boycott in the early 2000s by groups of young women for their t-shirts. apparently there was also one that said who needs a brain when you have these referring to their boobs I had a nightmare I was brunette

I had a nightmare I was brunette and then there was one that said the freshman 15 with a list of boys names below it like she fucked all those guys yes yeah so that was kind of the thing back which freshman though do you think freshman in college or freshman in high school honestly if I know Mike Jeffrey's probably high school that guy's a sicko

all right well so then in In 2003, they had a class action lawsuit, alleging that they didn't hire minorities, and whatever minorities they did hire, were relegated to, like, the back rooms because in the stores, it was either the hot models in front or the hot model-looking people working on the floor.

Yeah, Mike Jeffries obviously had a vision for what he wanted, I mean, for everything, who he wanted wearing Abercrombie and who he wanted working there. Yeah. And so they would hire some people of color, But if they got through, he would put them in the back. Go in the back.

You're in the back. He didn't want any people of color being seen. And even then, they were crushing it because in the early 2000s, they had 52 straight quarters of increasing earnings. That's bananas, man. They were just printing money. And then, yeah, all this shit starts happening. And I think the real start of the downfall was, was after the Great Recession

because they refused to lower their prices even in the face of a weakening consumer market with everybody being broke and whatnot. 2015, they had a woman who they did not hire because she wore a hijab because they said it was against their policies or their... You're not allowed to wear hats.

Dress code, yeah. Not a lot of... And that went all the way to the Supreme Court. And Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito said this is like the easiest case. Yeah, it was 8 to 1. How would it even make its way there then? You would think a lower court would have decided.

Yeah, that's what happens. And then they appeal it to a higher court. Oh, oh, the Abercrombie did? A lower court has to decide to get it. So Abercrombie just kept appealing. So I think they lost. And then I think they won. And then I think they lost.

I don't know exactly. Wow. Yeah. And then in 2016, they were voted the most hated retailer, beating out even Walmart, which has been a hated one for a long time. They also, on top of that, they had terrible customer service. You go in and it's just like, what do you want, fatty kind of shit? Are you looking for Cineabon?

Or, hey, hey, Ben, are you looking for Tilly's, you stupid? Honestly, probably something anti-Semitic against it. Oh, yeah. Hey, you, K-word. I mean, the very Aryan-looking boys on the... God, I just... I remember it feels so bad about myself. I was like, I will never...

Wow, I didn't even realize that Abercrombie, like, print ads and stuff really made me feel like shit about myself. I don't look like that. Only the guys on the water polo team who go to church look like that. I don't remember looking at... Because I was so young, I feel like...

Well, you've always been hot, so you... No, I was not... I was like a... No. But the... It was such a blip from where I bought a couple things from Abercrombie before I started being like, this is not cool. I don't want to look like this. But I never remember being like, oh, I want to be like that. It was such a weird.

I didn't want to look like it. I just thought that that's what women liked. Like Sarah Singer. I think I was just too young. And by the time I had moved on, I was like, oh, that shit is so goofy. But I do remember the women. I remember there was a woman with like, she had. the she had the Abercrombie and Fitch Denham on and what looked like the like the side of a thong

kind of sticking out of her yeah and truly just being like you got to remove this bag from the house because I'm gonna fucking freak out being a being a teenage boy is like it's just well because there was there was there was the horniness and then there was still it takes years for a young boy to get rid of the shame that comes from masturbated because you'd be so horny you can't even like function and then you'd take care of it and then you'd be like god i'm a terrible person what's wrong with me so many things are wrong with you uh so anyway culture began to change i mean they really nailed it obviously as is evidenced by their success but that was also such a weird period of time and maybe i'm just not that age anymore but i don't think everything

is like, I don't think anything is as overtly sexual as that time period was. I mean, I would... You think stuff is sexual now? Jeez. Dude, but going to the airport, my parents would be like, you can buy some magazines or whatever for the long flight. Oh, it was like Maxim? Yeah.

And I would just... Maxim Stuff Magazine, FHM, which was like For Him Magazine. Oh, I didn't even know that. And I'd be like, I like the articles. And it's just... most insane spreads, and there was no shame. I would be looking at it on a plane. I had too much shame. I couldn't do that. I was a little boy. If I had that magazine now, I'd be like, oh my God. I'm like to look at this in public. Yeah, sure. It's like guys who follow a bunch of like butts on Instagram and stuff. Oh, yeah. And you see them pull their Instagram out. And I'm like, dude, don't. Yeah, what are you doing? Put that way. Also, why are you like it?

Yeah, what do you do? Why are you like it? Why are you coming to marry you? Why are you commenting? to marry you she's not she might fuck you she's not gonna marry you she won't fuck you she won't see no she'll fuck you but she won't marry you she won't see it you won't she might though so actually keep it up you never know maybe maybe today's day

she's like oh Abercrombie lover fucking 16 couldn't think of a better user I also think I just in real time figured it out though it's there's no you don't need those magazines anymore because you could just be a little boy and follow butts on Instagram

Oh, wow, yeah. Dan Bilzerian is the new FHM and all that stuff for little boys. I'm going to go ahead and say, I was wrong. You guys are probably exposed to way more sexual stuff than. Yeah, that's true, actually. You can't even open the... You can't even open the... You can't even open the Instagram.

Without seeing a woman you want to like the photo. That would actually be way worse than a fucking Abercrombian Fitch bag. Well, speaking of, oh, yeah, it was the bag that made you horny. Yeah, I'm so glad I didn't have Instagram. Let's take the car and drive up the driveway and then reverse it and go in the opposite direction, because we're talking about a turnaround now. They kick out Mike Jeffries in 2014. Companies floundering around a little bit because the stock's in the toilet.

They're panned by all the analysts on Wall Street. It's the joke of everybody's... I mean, at that point, you would not catch... someone dead in Oh yeah I remember seeing that it was still publicly traded

and I'm like how the fuck is this still around? I mean you would walk by storage and you go for who who is where Greek guys

Greek guys guys in Greece yeah Europeans Europeans that actually is a very funny Europeans

Europeans kept Abercrombia alive dude I had family from Greece who came I swear to God it must have been

like 2015 2016 2016 2017 and it's always oftentimes when

family comes, they want to go to big name stores like Nike or wherever because it is just way cheaper in the States. So they're like, oh my God, I'm going to get whatever. But on that specific trip, we were like, where do you guys want to go? And they said Abercrombie and Fish. And I was like, are you sure? Because like, you'll get beat up if you wear that shit. And it was, it had like a huge moment in Europe, I guess. Yeah. Wow. God. I'm thinking about that and Joe's jeans. Lucky jeans. Oh, seven genes? Seven genes. True religion.

True religion. God, what a time, man. We were obsessed with jeans, you guys. It was probably to get over the Great Recession. We were just like, we got to focus on something else. Obama was like, well, I'm going to get some jakes. There's going to be some jeans. There's going to be some jeans.

New companies you've never heard of. We're going to use our fleet of drones to drop jeans on the middle, Midwest. Anyway, so they turn it around. 2019, they get a new CEO, a new CMO, a new design team. They stopped targeting teenagers exclusively, and they started targeting people in their 20s. They realized, it's actually a really, it's a really interesting story. They realized that there's not a whole lot of brands targeting the people just getting

out of college, starting their first jobs, starting to go to weddings. there's an entire new generation of people who weren't familiar with the old version of the brand so they've got a chance to start fresh and like a big part of it was they did not announce it they didn't go Domino's pizza style and say we fucked up we know our clothes sucked before

but now we're changing they just did it suddenly they just did it quietly and then all of a sudden I mean it was two years after that I was going you know Abercrombie is kind of I am so pissed that I didn't look at the stock when you said that. I think I did, and it was like 40, 50 bucks. And now it's, you know, it's, I think it doubled. But, yeah, some people have almost labeled it, like, in unbranding where they've kind of removed where, you know, it was this whole cultural signifier before where it's like you wanted to be wearing the stuff.

You wanted to be outwardly showing that, like, I am an elite person who will be, who can, who can wear this stuff that's only for cool people. Yeah. I've got the right skin color and hair color, and BenCon sucks shit. Yeah. Everybody except me gets to wear this shit. So they removed all that from it and went to a very uniform type place. It's stuff you can wear all the time. Yeah, they realized that they were, this demographic thought that Gap and J. Crew had fallen off, which is certainly true.

that shit sucks now and it's just all cheap dog shit and um you need another example i remember so j crew took over like big time in this interim period where uh no one would be caught dead wearing abercrombie and fitch like j crew was all the sudden the shit another one started off as a catalog all the sudden became very cool took over let me guess l l bean no j crew oh pat oh i thought you were saying another one like another no no just like another company like ever It was just a catalog, and then it turned into this brick and mortar store that just kind of took over everything, like nailed that kind of classic preppy look, and was pretty high quality. And I remember having J. Crew shorts and wearing them for literally years, doing everything in them. I would like, I painted houses one summer. I would paint in them. But then they finally started to fall apart. And I remember I was like, I'll just go back and get the same shorts. It was like a completely different short, just years.

later it was everything felt paper thin i got a pair of gap pants that i really really liked in 2018 and i rode my bike when i was living new york rode my bike with them on whole in the seat of the pants now i know i got a little bit of cake he's but it ain't that moist you know it or dry dry because dry would mean that it's like any i gotta just got to stop saying anyway i've said that too many times this episode but so those people but they were also targeting so not just people who didn't know about them during that era but the people who grew up and those millennials who were now older and who would want like you more sophisticated yeah yeah honestly i mean it's it's difficult like if you don't want like trendy clothes like i don't want to be

fucking chasing trends being like oh jeans are bagging out oh jeans are skinny now oh jeans or just normal ass clothes there's a lot of people out there who just want to look yeah uh the the other brands that they were trying to usurp was uniclo and zara that everybody thinks are too cheap and yeah their whole ethos went total 180 from exclusionary to this belonging thing they're way way way way more about inclusion minimalism like you said they're no longer preppy they're doing clothes for first time jobs for weddings essentials people who want like a yeah like a 90 i need like a 90 dollar dress that i can where all weekend at a wedding. Right, that's where it comes in where they're kind of chasing those millennials who grew up

and need stuff for events, need stuff for like work events, casual things. They even have an entire, it's called the Abercrombie Wedding Shop. But then the big thing that they, one. The wedding industrial complex in this country is out of control. It's crazy. You know more than anyone. I mean, well, you're obsessed with going to weddings. The CEOs and like the board have talked about how they got feedback where,

It's not just people who need a dress for the wedding. Weddings have become these fucking... Weddings have other people in them. Guests. No, no, no. Like you as a guest, you used to be like, I need a dress for the wedding. But now what they're realizing is like,

weddings have become whole weekends and weeks. And there's multiple events. So people are like, well, not only do I need a dress to wear to the wedding, but I need a dress for the welcome event. I need a dress for the fucking blah, blah, blah. Yeah, the rehearsal. But the through line throughout all of this is they, did keep going with the jeans, but they, back in the day, their genes, at least for women,

and this was a little bit of education for Emil and I, their genes only went up. No, I knew. Their genes only went up to size 12. And so what they did was they studied YouTube. This is like what their marketing people did. They studied YouTube videos of fashion girlies, and they realized that there is something called the waste gap problem. I guess it's when you're a little wider around the hips and the jeans don't like hug your waist or some shit so they started making their jeans go up to size 32 where they they used to only go up to 10 actually is what I read and they also went against the fast fashion grain and they made their shit quality but still affordable and you were like 32 that's not that big I mean well I looked it up in the article

it said that they used to go up to 10 and now they go up to 32 I'm not super familiar with women's sizes yeah but they're all sorts of wacky fucked up i don't get it of i mean sometimes they're small medium large like like boys yeah and then there's like size zero and four and then pants is out so i'm like i can pretend like i know how it works i did go on the site it does seem like they have way more inclusive uh sizing because i don't know what the 32 number is because it's like on the site i was looking at jeans that goes all the way up to like 38 um for boys no for women and they have

they have an entire line for women who you know want more they call it the curve love line and that line made up half of their denim sales last year which is crazy and that's what I was like I get the branding aspect of of creating an air of exclusivity

and saying like oh you know everyone wants us you want to be an Abercrombie boy don't you but it seems it's crazy to like cut out a huge portion of your uh because it worked at the time it worked at the time and uh mike jeffreys even said if you at the time he said if we appeal to everybody else of all shapes sizes and colors then we'll just become vanilla and we won't be any

different from any other brand which i think obviously proof is in the pudding by their by their sales, it, it represented the time. And now this is a totally different time. The culture has changed. I just think it's interesting how quietly they did it, how they utilized social media. They probably got a few influencers on board. And then they let the clothes just kind of speak for themselves, which then you rely on word of mouth. I think it kind of lends itself to gatekeeping a little bit. Do you think I had a lot to do with it? Do you think my word of mouth on that one episode when I said it? I'm not going to say that it didn't. I'm single-handedly responsible. I think that you probably, I mean, it got me. I'm one person. I mean, it is very

funny. It's the, it's crazy how stigma can stick around. I, so I said that because I had a couple t-shirts. And people liked, I had this gray t-shirt. I remember people being like, wow where did you get that t-shirt i'm always looking for just like basic t-shirts and i'd be like uh but i actually don't know because like i just didn't want to be like abercambian that's wild and i still even obviously i can intellectualize it oh so you hate chinese people because of that wong shirt no no no no this is i still when i go on the site i'm like this is so embarrassing i cannot believe i'm on abercrumbian pitch uh it's just it's It's like, I'm just scarred from, it was such a goofy brand for so long.

Yeah, I, I'm still, it's new to me. It still is a little, goofy, I will say. So they do a lot of that basic stuff. They also do, at least for the men, I'm sure they do it for the women, too. They do some, they do like some faux retro stuff, some, like, faux faded. It looks good. But it's new, but it looks like it's supposed to be old. So it'll be like a 49.

shirt that looks like it's from 1985 or something like that. Oh, vintage C looks. Yes, but it's brand new. Yeah. Which I guess it doesn't matter, you know? What doesn't matter if you fucking... I want that job. I want to be the guy beating up the shirts. I'm making them look more.

In a room, just whipping them against a stone by myself. Oh, man. They just... It's all come full circle. They're just buying back all their old clothes from all the Eastern Europeans who've been wearing them for the last few decades. And they spruce them up and just...

market. Maybe it was the long, maybe they got rid of Mike Jeffries too long. They made him step down, but Mike Jeffries had this long vision where he was like, no, I've got all of Europe hooked on these things. And we're going to buy them back. I think they're big in China too. I feel like Asia really liked Abercrombie as well, because it's, again, a very Western American thing that everybody aspires to wear. Yeah. I mean, but they are still chasing the trends a little bit. Like when you look at the jeans, they're doing the, you can, you can go get your baggy jeans there so i wanted to highlight something and i'm not sure yet if this is what the title of this episode is going to be but it's a rare example i think well there's there's two that i can

think of if you've got others please sound off in the comments the the the adage of late is go woke go broke it's more of a right-wing thing i think but that's definitely a right-wing thing Yeah, but it's like, you know, if you, if you alienate, if you alienate a big chunk of your audience for whatever reason, it could potentially harm sales, lead to boycotts, whatever. And it's funny because, yeah, this is a very good example of going woke, and I'm putting that in major air quotes. I think this is very different, though. This is not like. Someone considered, I'm just saying, according to the definitions of what these people would look at, this would be like, oh, so now you're marketing to like overweight people. and black people

there goes Abercrombie but that's the thing they're not even really marketing to it like you said it's been this quiet thing they're just being they're just providing clothes that bigger people

can fit in and we're like the fattest fucking country that's ever existed I mean that just seems like the UK is up I think we rival them

each year we're like we're always neck but this is not I think the right goes after that thing where you know It's often these days, based on transgender stuff.

Oh, yeah. Bud Light. Oh, yeah, Bud Light. Definitely freaked out over the Dylan Mulvaney thing. Target, everyone freaked out over the... Tuckable swim trunks? Yes, exactly. It's always...

Or bikini bottoms, rather? Yeah. It seems like it's always linked to that. It's not like... Inclusivity, generally? I mean, a lot... If, yeah. Well, because, yeah, the other story...

I guess it's less about go-wool. go rich because that's that was what I was going to say elf eyes lips face the the makeup brand that we talked about months ago and we reported on that short selling group that uh looking back I'm like oh that was so uh short-sighted of them because their whole thing was oh they utilized TikTok to turn sales into to 10x their sales and things spread rapidly on TikTok, and it is now coming out that they are associated with the nexium people. Therefore, that's likely to spread on TikTok and just as easily ruin the reputation that they've just now built up for themselves. Did not pan out. Did not play out. They were dead

wrong. Elf is here to stay. They've now cemented themselves as this. I'll put it to you this way there are radio commercials for elf where they're just they're just bragging about their uh their diversity it's like elf is uh one of the only companies with i believe a female ceo a quarter of their board of directors are people of color and i think you mean d e i and like another quarter are women or something like that and it's an interesting commercial because they're not advertising the brand they're just saying like hey we're this kind of company no makeup brand had done that before Ulta which is like the other big big leader

kind of fucking makeup guy what's going on how you've never heard of Ulta dude no I know but what are you talking about they just they don't no makeup brand has ever made them has ever branded themselves no makeup brands ever done that in this way that I know of in this way in the modern era as like hey we are we're your people where we get you we're your guys they're all over TikTok they market themselves extremely extremely well

in a new refreshing way that's not at all like the fucking maybebeline shit because that was kind of not exclusionary but it was definitely

like they're using super models and stuff to push their shit you want to look like a supermodel by this shit but that's kind of like every brand's leaned into that now where it's you know

the models who look more like regular people not this kind of unhealthy image. They're still leaving me out, though. They're still saying, fuck you, you can't buy our shit, Ben Kahn. Who, Abercrombie?

It's just every brand. Have we talked about kind of just how crazy all of this has panned out for them? Like the stock performance? Yeah. You're talking about like 285% on the year or something like that. I mean, if you pull up a five-year chart, it just kind of goes hockey stick mode. It was $15, $15 a share. In 2012, in fall of 2022, $15 a share.

And now they are at, and they reached a peak just a few months ago of about $186 a share. And now they're currently at $165. So that's a 10x return. Yeah, doing just insane revenues. It's absolutely bananas. Yeah, let's see how Urban Outfitters is doing. Oh, you know what else we had? I didn't remember American E.

Eagle Outfitter, which was basically... I've got American Eagle right here. Which, are they still around? They're still around. That was basically a knockoff of Abercrombie and Fitch. That's right. It was like a... I know a guy who's still worse there.

In what capacity? He designs men's accessories and he hates it. I mean, what kind of shit are they making? Belts and wallets and stuff that nobody is good. Probably the kids who are aspiring to be cool, teenagers and shit. Or like European guys. Allow my American Outfit Huss. Yeah.

Jeremy Fragrance. That guy. Jeremy Fragrance probably wears American Eagle outfitters. Jeans white. Like really wet. Not a cool way. I'm getting flashbacks to like school dances where I was just, I was like, okay. I only do, me it was, I only do slow dances.

I don't dance because I couldn't. I didn't know. What do you couldn't? You just move. Yeah, but I felt like everybody was watching me not be able to dance. And at that point, everyone was kind of just grinding. So you're. I didn't like that either.

I remember one of my dances in the back, like in the other part of the auditorium for the kids like me who didn't dance, they had this one dance. They had it set up with one of those steady hand things where if the metal touches the wire, it buzzes. But it was like a big one where you had to guide the ring through a long...

It was like a game. Yeah, but it was like a really complex one that you had to do it. So this is what you were doing at school dances? this one in particular yeah and everybody you had to make it all the way through just to get like a five dollar taco bell gift certificate or something and everybody kept buzzing it and i fucking did it like no problem and i remember my history teacher miss millcoup was like you should be a brain surgeon and i was like damn i got good hand-eye coordination i'm so

proud of myself while everybody in and everyone else is just getting rubbed raw on the gymnasium I was back there going, damn, I got to be a brain surgeon. Loser. Yeah, absolute fucking loser, man. Not cool. Not cool. I was in the gymnasium. Of course you were.

Listening to, you know, Jay-Z and R. Kelly's Fiesta, fiesta, fiesta. I don't even know that song, no. Yeah, of course, because you were fucking playing brain surgeon. Yeah. Well, I knew, I knew Cot and I Joe. I was going to the bathroom and changing my underwear because I came in them. Wait, I can't tell if you're kidding. yes i'm kidding oh well you know some people come in there i'm not kidding no i'm joking

i am i'm joking i wouldn't do that i did i did that i really don't know anymore i'm joking i obviously wouldn't do that but i did it's not that you wouldn't it's that it's like of course you wouldn't but right because i didn't did i no i did i didn't i didn't wait did you did you or did you not accidentally come in your pants i didn't okay but i did actually do it no i didn't i definitely didn't do it okay i believe that you didn't i've never accidentally come in my pants never never i've never had a wet dream never yeah we've talked about this oh i've had dreams where it happens and i forget and then i wake up and i'm like did too do oh it probably just dried at that point? Nope, because there would be dryness and it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be like

there's something about Mary, which, by the way, when I saw that movie and that happened, I didn't know what coming was yet because I was, I learned how to masturbate at a late age, I think, and when I did learn how, I was like, wait, does that, is that normal? Does it just like, you better catch it because it's going to go somewhere. I didn't realize, which even now that I know, I'm like, what a weird move that they did in that movie where it's like, where did it go? Like adults made that movie where they're like, oh, what if it gets stuck in her hair? No, what if it gets on his ear first? Right.

What is that? What kind of bit is that? He comes and it lands on his own ear? What? That pisses me off. Right, and he says, oh, it must be a little bit of hair gel. And she says, oh, great, I need some and puts it in her hair and he goes. Yeah, and then she's got come in her hair.

That's, wow. This is what I'm talking about. Yeah, this is what we're talking about, folks. We had to watch these types of movies. I had to watch Maxim Magazine. That was crazy. Cross-country flight or like I went to go visit family. Why would you do that to yourself?

Because I was like, I'm interested in what gentlemen are reading. And then it's just like a fucking 10-hour flight from. Athens to Newark just going like oh fuck just dying i remember dying in miss middle coop's class before i knew how to mass i've told this story probably before but just sitting there in miss middle coop's class looking out the window being so horny i couldn't think about mesopotamia i couldn't think about the fertile crescent not one more second you can only think about your own fertile crescent i could only think about you're recently fertile crescent why not a woman's that's That's what usually is referred to as fertile.

I'm just sitting there thinking about boobs, man. And I'm just going like, God, I got to wait like 10 more years before I could have sex. That's going to be life-changing. I'm sitting there just like, oh, I got to go home and study for my bar mitzvah. This fucking sucks. And now no one's horny. No one, no one, what are kids wearing today? What's going on at the mall?

They're all wearing uniforms. Does the mall even exist anymore? Yes, it exists. The mall's having a renaissance. Yes. Young people are now, thanks to Stranger Things, season nine. No way. Where they're all 40 and they're going, I hate that show, if only because it's making me feel old as time goes on.

Because I remember when they were just children and it's Stranger Things season one. And now it's like Stranger Things Season 6 and he's like, 11, you've got to come help. And it's like, I remember when he was like 11. Drake doesn't even find 11 hot anymore. That's how old we've gotten. Isn't she married or something? Isn't she like 17? I have no idea, but I remember reading with the Drake stuff that it's like,

Millie Bobby Brown's husband something. To Drake? She's not married to Drake. Boy, do you think he's relieved right now? Millie Bobby Graham. Graham? Isn't that his last name? Oh, that's his last name.

Yeah. I remember that being the thing. uh well so what did we learn here ladies and gentlemen what did we learn what did we learn if you saw you have a success if you really need to turn things around get rid of the weirdos at the top get rid of them appeal to more people see i was going to say the opposite i was going to start with a weirdo no if you're a weirdo with a with a fledgling sex ring with a fledgling sex ring with a fledgling sex ring go on don't let them take your company away from you you're just there's

Five years on the horizon, you're going to turn this thing around. And if you're an aspiring model, don't just don't suck off anybody. Especially if he doesn't have a nose. Oh, God. Oh, that reminds me, not around the same time, but speaking of sex perverts and fashion, the Dove Charnie, the American Apparel. American Apparel founder, now known as Los Angeles Apparel, doing the same playbook of Scanticle. clad um

models with like super the flash is really loud in the photos and they just look washed out and like I don't know what that look is that I mean that dude has a very unique

vision for what horny is and it uh... stuck in 2007 I find it repugnant no you love it I'm like it's so it's such a weird specific

thing and I'm like it's very Maybe we should not even go into this. It's just, it reminds, it's a similar kind of thing that I had with where it didn't feel like Abercrombie was for me. I didn't feel cool enough for a lot of the American apparel stuff. You didn't feel cool enough to get horny by the American apparel. It's sort of that. And also, I just felt like none of these American apparel models would be interested in me. Therefore, I'm not interested in there.

I did wear some of their basics. They had great fitting T-shirts. But they were like $30. To quote McElmore, that's $30 for a T-shirt. South Pacific nations are considered the most obese. Interesting. Well, there are a lot of people there. I think there's like 300 million people in one little island. Yeah, but I'm sure it's a rate. Yeah, but I'm sure it's a rate not amount of burgers no it's not the amount of people it's like the rate of obesity oh i thought it was the um the total weight of them all no did you eat it really no i didn't really think that um and that's um do you shop at abercrumby then talking to a girl to party just

running out of things to say Justin. Do you show it? Do you? Let's sound off in the comments if you shop at Abercrombie. Where did you shop in? Do you go to the mall anymore? I am very curious what the teenage brands are now.

I have to imagine it's moved on from the whole, from the same ecosystem we had. But it's. I think Levi's and like, But I mean, that was there But it seems like they're all still there Levi's Gap. Also, if you pronounce Stucy as Stussy, get your head checked. It's Stozy.

Yeah, that's a... Stussy. Shut the hell up. Man, it makes me want to turn around a company. Put me in charge of a brand. Oh, I'll... So what have we learned? You make it more inclusive, you shut the fuck up about it, and you get people on TikTok. Unbrand it, too. Quit going so brand for it.

Like, no one wants to be a walking... Well, you're about to do the... No one wants to be a walking billboard for your dog shit company. Yeah, unless it's a dog shit company. Then I'll gladly... Use our dog shit bags. It's got to be bags because why would you start a company? Unless it's fertilizer.

That'd be smart. Hey, dog poop fertilizer. Sharks, I'm looking for $500,000 to just buy the company. Just take it off my hands. All right, folks, we're going to go into the bonus now. I've got a great story. I got a great story about my dad about just. jury duty that my friend

Alex just reminded me about and if you want to do that it's ben and amielshah dot is it did we get calm we got calm maybe okay it's no longer benedemielshow.net it is benedemielshow dot com it was never dot net that's confusing that was a joke at com

it might be confusing it was always and has it is and always has been benedemiel show dot com also I did not come in my pants at the dance or did he might have I did I did not okay bye everybody Thank you.