Forever 21 CEO Winnie Park on reinventing the brand for Gen Z and millennials

Forever 21’s bankruptcy in 2019 can be blamed on a number of factors, but a couple stand out—namely, its overestimation of the number of physical stores it needed (200 of which were eventually closed by the brand’s new owners) and its loss of relevance among its core audience.

In fact, a 2019 survey by research firm Ypulse found that perception of Forever 21 among consumers aged 13–30 had dipped by 13%.

So, naturally, when Forever 21’s current CEO, Winnie Park, who is leading the brand’s restructuring, joined the company in January 2022, she knew she had a tough job ahead: overhauling a fast fashion brand after a public bankruptcy in a climate where concerns around sustainability in fashion abound, as well as bringing back young shoppers to Forever 21’s stores.

But the former Paper Source CEO has stepped into her role with decades of experience behind her, including nine years spent at LVMH-owned luxury retailer DFS, and leading women’s merchandising at Levi Strauss-owned Dockers.

Under Park, the brand has been focused on reopening brick-and-mortar locations with more personalized and curated experiences for younger shoppers and growing the brand’s TikTok presence.

In an exclusive chat with Retail Brew, she tells us how she’s reinventing the brand for Gen Z.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What is your key focus in terms of Forever 21’s overhaul? Gen Z, in particular, uses fashion as a means of self-expression. They’re really not going to have a brand label them, and they don’t ascribe to a group…You may wake up wanting to wear Y2K fashion and end the day wearing goth [attire]. What we want to do at Forever 21 is provide that full spectrum and palette of different looks and trends so that they can address the various moods and occasions that are relevant in their lives. So that focus on Gen Z has also led us to be much more cognizant and tune in to cultural moments and cultural zeitgeist.

For instance, we know that media and music is super important to them. We kicked off this year with an amazing partnership with Rolling Loud, which is the largest hip-hop festival in the world. Acknowledging that hip-hop is super important to the culture, is super important to this customer…For us, it is about constant waves, and we call it a rolling thunder of engagement and news so that we can activate the community, not just have great products out there.

How are you connecting with this new Gen Z consumer? We’ve discovered Gen Z is an omni-channel generation, not just in terms of shopping preference, because they will often browse and get product news on social media. For them, TikTok is a bit more relevant than Instagram, but Instagram is still up there. That’s kind of like their window to the world. You need to be able to then extend that window into the site, the app experience.

For us, storytelling has been really big. You may start with a story on TikTok that really focuses on festival looks, but unless you weave that all the way through to how that story shows up when you’re shopping the site, it falls dead. That same story needs to pop up in stores, and our Gen Z customers actually love stores. Gen Z embraces the notion of going into a store [and] looking, feeling, touching, and engaging with the product. That omni-channel ecosystem of how we touch them goes beyond just commerce channels, and goes into marketing, social engagement, and activation.

And how are you bringing your core consumer—i.e., millennials—back to the brand? We are trying really hard in terms of partnering again. It’s too easy just to go to an influencer. It’s [about] what influences millennials in life beyond human beings, right? What are the cultural moments they care about? We’ve got this great opportunity right now to invite some customers back to say, “Take a second look at us. We’ve got things for you.” It’s talking to them about the breadth and range of styles, the value in the product, even talking about things like size, scale, and expansion of size ranges, [and] the democratic approach that we take to fashion—everyone should be able to wear this regardless of size.

Editor’s note 6/15/23: This story has been updated since its original posting.