How Fran Horowitz quietly rebuilt Abercrombie

Abercrombie’s Fran Horowitz and the leadership discipline behind modern brand reinvention

In retail, reinvention is rarely a single bold move. It’s a long sequence of unglamorous decisions made with discipline: listen harder than you talk, separate signal from noise, and let the people closest to the customer do the work.

That was the throughline of Fran Horowitz’s main-stage conversation at NRF 2026, where she accepted the “Visionary 2026” award and offered a glimpse into the leadership mechanics behind Abercrombie’s transformation.

For years, the industry watched legacy brands struggle to stay relevant. Many did what legacy organizations often do when pressure rises: they over-explained, over-engineered, and tried to steer customers back toward what the company wanted to sell. Horowitz’s message cut against that instinct. The work starts by admitting that the customer is in charge.

The most overlooked competency in retail leadership: being reachable

Horowitz didn’t describe leadership as performance. She described it as proximity.

The habit that shows up repeatedly in her story is simple: be approachable. Early mentors taught her that good ideas can come from anywhere, but only if people feel safe enough to bring them forward. That’s not culture as a poster. It’s culture as a daily operating system.

It also explains why humility was the first leadership lesson she highlighted. In a role defined by visibility and scale, humility becomes a practical tool. It lowers the distance between decision makers and reality. It makes it easier to hear inconvenient truths before they show up as poor sales, low conversion, or a brand that quietly slips out of favor.

Horowitz framed it in surprisingly human language. People called her “normal,” and she had to learn why that mattered. Being fully present, remembering small details, checking in, listening without rushing to the next task. Those “small” behaviors are exactly what creates followership in high-change environments.

Customer centricity is not a value. It’s a practice.

The retail industry loves to say it is customer obsessed. Horowitz was blunt about the gap between the slogan and the work.

At Abercrombie, one of the early shifts she drove was teaching the team that the brand doesn’t get to dictate preference. Customers do. The now-famous denim detail is telling because it’s so ordinary: customers liked the jeans but wanted zippers instead of button flies. The company listened, made the change, and denim sales surged.

The strategic lesson isn’t “add zippers.” It’s that customer feedback is often unglamorous and literal, but those literal frustrations are exactly what blocks growth. Fixing the friction creates momentum.

Her description of “staying close to the customer” was equally literal. Teams spent weekends in cities, talked to customers face-to-face, went to local events like Friday night football games. That is not market research as a quarterly exercise. It’s market research as muscle memory.

Transformation required a second shift: autonomy with accountability

Horowitz also described something many leaders find uncomfortable: the team already knew what to do. They just weren’t allowed to.

When she arrived, she saw smart, curious, optimistic people who lacked autonomy and accountability. That combination is lethal. It creates passivity and slow decisions, even when insights exist. Her job was to “take the top off” and let talent move.

That release of autonomy mattered even more once the brand architecture became clear. One of the turning points was separating Abercrombie and Hollister, which had become too similar. Hollister leaned into the teen customer. Abercrombie aged up. With distinct targets, teams could stop arguing about who they were serving and start building products and experiences with clarity.

Why “block out the noise” is more than motivational talk

It’s easy to say “ignore the noise.” It’s harder to operationalize it.

Horowitz framed the last five to seven years as an extraordinary change cycle. Macro volatility, shifting consumer behavior, relentless media narratives. Her answer wasn’t to predict every disruption. It was to build a mindset in the organization: control what you can control.

That mindset also underpins her “always forward” mantra. She signs emails that way for a reason. In retail, you can’t dwell. You get a report card daily. If something isn’t working, it won’t magically improve with time. Fix it, learn, move.

Even the way she talks about mistakes is revealing. Her “burrito bets” normalize being wrong. They make learning visible. They remove the incentive to hide problems until they become expensive. In a high-speed business, psychological safety is a financial advantage.

The next chapter: global growth, partnerships, and an AI-funded leap forward

Abercrombie’s future roadmap, as Horowitz described it, has three clear vectors.

First, international expansion. The business remains heavily North America-weighted (around 80%), with global representing about 20%. Offices in London and Shanghai signal intent to accelerate EMEA and APAC.

Second, a shift in operating model toward partnerships. Horowitz described the move from predominantly owned-and-operated toward selective licensing and collaboration. Eyewear and a newly licensed kids business are early examples. The deeper implication is that the brand sees scale as something to be built with partners, not just owned.

Third, accelerated investment in innovation and digital capability. Horowitz was candid that years ago the company couldn’t fund aggressive investment. Now it can, and it is. In a market where AI-driven retail capability will become common, the advantage may come from how quickly a brand modernizes its foundation.

What made this session matter

Horowitz didn’t offer a glamorous playbook. She offered something more useful: a reminder that reinvention is operational.

It’s culture expressed through behavior. Customer centricity expressed through practice. Autonomy expressed through accountability. And resilience expressed through forward motion.

“Always forward” is not a slogan. It’s how you survive retail.

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