Retail Roundup: New LI Hollister opens in Tanger Riverhead

Teen apparel retailer Hollister’s new store at Tanger Outlets Riverhead is one of up to 40 that the chain’s parent company is opening in fiscal 2019, a spokeswoman said.

While the new store, which opened Aug. 16, is at the outlet shopping center, it is not an outlet, said a spokeswoman for Hollister’s parent company, Abercrombie & Fitch Co., which is based in New Albany, Ohio.

The Hollister in Riverhead “will carry a variety of products for teens — denim, tees, dresses, sweaters and sweatshirts, accessories, etc.,” she said.

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has been focusing more on the Hollister brand than Abercrombie & Fitch stores, which sell clothing for adults and have been less profitable. 

Hollister stores had net sales of $428.4 million in the first quarter that ended May 4, a 1 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.  Meanwhile, Abercrombie & Fitch’s store sales declined 1 percent to $306 million during that time.

The modest increase in overall sales was due in part to Abercrombie & Fitch Co. closing stores, Neil Saunders, managing director of retail at GlobalData, a Manhattan-based market research firm, wrote in comments on the company in May.

“In our view, this selective pruning of the fleet is a necessary measure which, over the medium term, will help improve profitability and allow A&F to focus its investments on stores and channels which can truly deliver,” he said.

As of May 4, there were 267 Abercrombie & Fitch stores in the United States, 18 fewer than there were a year earlier.

During the same period, two Hollister stores in the United States were closed, leaving a total of 393.

There are six Hollister stores on Long Island, including those at Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, Smith Haven Mall in Lake Grove and Westfield Sunrise mall in Massapequa.

Retail Roundup is a column about major retail news on Long Island — store openings, closings, expansions, acquisitions, etc. — that is published online and in the Monday paper. To read more of these columns, click here. If you have news to share, please send an email to Newsday reporter Tory N. Parrish at tory.parrish@newsday.com.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.