From a Forever 21 Employee,
Forever 21 has been in the news quite a bit recently for one main reason. It broke the internet when people found out that Forever 21 was considering filing for bankruptcy. The second people heard they took to twitter and tiktok spreading that they will be closing all of their retail stores, and all of the stores will be closing down. With Forever 21 trending on tiktok and thousand of people blaming the Hot Cheeto collection and shirts that say I love tacos on them, many started to believe that Forever 21 was forever closed.
From a current Forever 21 employee, I can say that no, Forever 21 are not closing down all of their stores. They are not going out of business right now. So please do not go to the store associates and yell at them, asking why they don’t have a giant going-out-of-business sale. Forever 21 is closing a few locations so don’t be shocked if there are 1 or 2 that will no longer exist in bigger cities. For the most part, though, they will be staying open! So, now that we squashed the whole going out of business rumor, let’s talk about a few more misconceptions.
The Hot Cheeto collection, and the shirt with stupid sayings on them, are Trashion, the company. Coming from someone who was working during the time of the Hot Cheeto launch, the pieces of that collection sold out within days. It got to the point where people were calling about when we would get more in stock. Just because you may not like something, it doesn’t mean there’s not a market for it. As for the shirts with stupid sayings about tacos and hamburgers, yes, I will admit there are some left in the store. But, that being said, there are only a FEW. They are usually folded in the middle of tables, or hidden in the back of the store. Most of Forever 21’s clothes fit the current trend of a teenager to a young adult.
In terms of the bankruptcy, there are different types of bankruptcy. The kind that Forever 21 filed for is called reconstruction. They filed for the type of bankruptcy that will help them reconstruct (hence the name) and rebuild the company. Forever 21 won’t shut their doors and permanently close. There are a few stores that did this type of deal, Aeropostale included. In fact, they reconstructed and rebranded and are still doing fine to this day.
Finally, everyone is talking about the major sales happening in-store and online. The additional % off of sale is a new way Forever 21 is doing markdowns. For example, if an item is on sale, there will be a red mark through the tag and whatever additional percent off will come off of the price. So really that “huge sale” is just the store’s new way of marking clearance items without printing new tags. The giant 30% off storewide and online was the back to school deal. It was the deal to get people into the store and spend a lot of money for back to school! It’s not uncommon for retail stores to do a giant back to school sale. As for online codes, sometimes you just get lucky and can stack a few on top of each other.
So, the lesson here is don’t always believe everything you hear online, especially without doing the proper research. Now, Ariana Grande suing Forever 21 over a look-alike model might be a different story. Stay tuned to see how that one goes.
Image from:https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/08/28/forever-21-bankruptcy-20…