Forever 21

founded by

Do Won Chang & Jin Sook Chang

belongs to

Do Won Chang

about

Forever 21 is an American chain of clothing retailers with branches in the United States, Canada, Ireland, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Thailand, China, South Korea, Japan,Puerto Rico, Philippines, and United Kingdom offering fashion and accessories for young women and men.

history

It all began in a 900 square ft. shop in Figueroa Street in Los Angeles on April 21, 1984. The store was called Fashion 21. By the end of the first year, sales had risen from $35,000 to $700,000. The Founder reinvested his success by opening new stores every six months eventually changing the name to Forever 21.

Forever 21 opened its 11th store and the first store located in a mail in 1989. Forever 21 has multiplied its presence by expanding the average size to 5,000 square feet per store. Since then, Forever 21 has been running specialty stores in major mall locations nationwide.

In 1995, the company expanded their store in Miami's Mall of the Americas, this location was the first store outside of California. Adding new stores every six months, Forever 21 had reached a total of 40 stores by 1997. Forever 21 has rapidly expanded throughout the United States.

Creating its own prototype store in Northridge Fashion Center, Forever 21 has employed its proprietary design concepts to all its stores since then. By this time Forever 21 also increased its average size to 9,000 square feet (840 m2) per store in prime spots of top tier malls.

Drastically expanding the number of Forever 21 stores nationally, Forever 21 has opened XXI flagship stores in Texas, Miami, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Edmonton, Canada. The average size of XXI venues are an average of 24,000 square feet. XXI offers true one-stop shopping in a fun and exciting environment and has become the ultimate source for the latest fashions at a great value.

Since 2002, Forever 21 Inc. has been raked as one of the 50 largest privately held companies in Los Angeles. In 2005, Forever 21 was operating over 355 locations nationwide with the brands Forever 21, Forever XXI, For Love 21, and Gadzooks. Now in 2008, averaging 90 new store openings each year, Forever 21 is multiplying its presence with every new location.

In July 2005, Forever 21 opened its new flagship store in Pasadena, California. At 40,000 sq ft. and two levels, it proves that bigger really is better, it�s upscale and accessible to all ages and demographics. It�s also one of Forever 21�s largest locations to date. It�s numerous shop-in-shop concepts demonstrate the continuing strength of boutique and specially retailing over the department or megastore format.

The first European store opened in Birmingham, United Kingdom on Friday 12 Nov 2010. The second opened in Ireland in Dublin's Jervis Street Shopping Centre, Jervis Street on November 13, 2010. A store is going to open at La Maquinista in Barcelona, Spain, in 2011. Two stores are going to open in Vienna, Austria, in 2011.

It has also opened in several places in Asia, such as New Delhi, India.