The Dirt on the Trendiest Stores: Part One : Forever 21 is Forever Overrun!

Hi all! Sorry for my delayed absence but I've been working on some special blog entries just for you--so I'm going to jump right into it! Recently I have been going to some of the trendiest clothing boutiques to give you guys the richest, fullest telling of my shopping experience. I studied the organization of the shop, the price ranges and the customer service. Sometimes I was enthralled with the results, sometimes I was really disappointed. But I will let you guys know all that went down right here on this blog!

The first clothing shop I will discuss in this entry series is Forever 21. I have a serious love/hate relationship with this clothing boutique. I have held my opinion of them for a while and I never made it public, because in spite of all its fault, the avid shopaholic in me doesn't want them to go away because of bad reviews. But they seriously need to shape themselves up in some areas.

The Origin of Forever 21

Do Wong Chang, the founder of Forever 21 alongside his two daughters that now help to run the highly successful 4.5 billion dollar
 business franchise.

Let's star off with when it all began. Forever 21 was founded in LA, Cali in 1984 by Do Wong Chang and his wife Jin Sook Chang. If you look around the store and your inner fashionista tingling is telling you that some of the items along with its presentation screams "Korean Fashion Obsession" well you would be correct. Although founded in LA, the store has an atmosphere that is constantly associated with the Korean fashion world that the Changs' heritage stems from .  

The philosophy of every Forever 21 is that there is no "in between" girl--every girl falls into her own niche . Within this business chain there are several girls' sense of style embodied in their own specific category. The focus of Forever 21's hugely Korean- fashion-inspired direction ensures that they will always have their finger on the pulse of the hottest things out there. And now with the Chang daughters going full throttle into the family business , we can be assured that they will keep up this momentum.

You see this image in America and
your mind will most likely think " Oh, it's obviously
an Ad by Forever 21" . But shocker--it's not! In fact
it's a random Ad made by a random
Korean clothing store! Seeing the fashion connections  yet?

Usually in American clothing shops, we take a few trends and run with them and constantly try to reinvent them. But in Korea , it's a different story. They absorb all forms of fashion in their shops , making each look appear to be strictly stratified, cookie-cutter and effortless to achieve.

Look at this typical advertisement for a
fashion-forward Korean clothing shop.
Notice something familiar? This Ad and several
others bear an odd resemblance to
Forever 21 ads! Similar minds
think alike obviously! 

This cultural method of mass incorporation of various different fashion styles is the way that Forever 21 goes about doing everything. It has paid off a great deal as there are approximately over 480 store chains and the brand itself is valued at around 4.5 billion dollars as of 2012. It's a store that gives you everything that you desire...whether it is wise to or not.


Welcome to the Wonderful World of Forever 21!

When you enter the amazing world of Forever 21, you are bombarded with images of "coolness" "trendiness"  " youth" and "bargains". You feel special even to be in a store like this. It fills you up with this great emotion of awe and indestructibility--whether you realize it or not! Allow me to explain: Forever 21 makes you feel like you can be any girl you want to be and do it fabulously well with their never-ending selection of choices and varieties. But...therein lays the problem! Their selections are...never-ending. 

Current trends at Forever 21 is to make ads displaying hip, high-fashion
models ( In this case, Kendall Jenner, a sister of the infamous Kardashian clan) .It's intriguingly awesome to find out that this look is all within your reach for non-designer prices at Forever 21!

To prove my point further--on a common shopping trip to Forever 21--what do your friends commonly say about the clothing items they bought?  In normal situations with normal stores, your gal pal will say to you " Omg, look at this top that I bought at ____".  But nine times out of ten, when you speak to your gal pal that just shopped at Forever 21, they will say " Look at what I found at Forever 21." GULP!  Shopping should ONLY be referred to as "finding" when you're venturing through a thrift store or a black friday sale. And since everyday isn't black friday--does that make Forever 21 a-GULP--thrift store?!!! Oh no! But just like in thrift stores, you find yourself walking out with many things and you spent more and bought more than you intended to.

How you feel right after shopping at Forever 21--if you're not too busy
being miserable with a headache that is!

How you look when you get home and actually LOOK at what you bought there--wtf?
Half these things you will prolly never wear and didn't need immediately.

The last stage of your Forever 21 experience--"OMG I spent so much money
on all of this random stuff? Just because it was so cheap and appealing?!! NOOOO"

             
Woe to the average shopper that comes across the willful power that seduces you to enter Forever 21. This is because the average shopper doesn't come prepared with a set idea of what they want to buy exactly. They have a metaphorical, distant concept of what they need so they are easily distracted by similar looking items. Further more, the average shopper wants more than anything else to be in ; and for a store like Forever 21--the epitome of being "in"--these people are ripe for the pickings. 

The average shopper will shell out a lot more cash than they wanted to spend at Forever 21. Because they buy as many things as they are told to buy according to the store's advertisement, but when they get home and put it all together--its TOO MUCH, overly exaggerated, and in the end, some customers can miss the look they were going for by a HUGE mark.  It's highly possible that they make so much money off of you because you aren't aware of this. But unfortunately your bank account and wardrobe pays a severe price. I am not entirely sure that this is not intentional on the store brands part---mostly because of the behavior of their employees and the startling responses you get from them when you ask certain questions. They have the world at their finger tips but lack the grave, necessary skills of organization. This entry will discuss all of this in great depth--and I will be leaving no stone unturned!

Overrun! Overaccesorized! Over Burdened! Over done!!  
 The Breakdown: Style Organization.  Clothing Organization.    
 Customer Service. Prices.

Forever 21 is the store that we all grew up with. Teenagers, twenty-somethings alike hugely rely on this store for bargain-priced trendy wear. The store is vast. Tons of diversity. Tons of everything. And THAT's its main problem. I hate to blow the horn on this one, but Forever 21 is like, schizophrenic/bipolar/bulimic/anythingit all thrown into one messy package. The store levels are always a mess--and that's when they are "fixed".   The categorization is poor and its really hard to find a top or a bottom in the same place because their concept of "order" is color coordination, or price,or what the staff THINKS belongs together. In other words, you can walk into Forever 21 and walk out looking like a freaking Toucan Sam (a parrot)...or worse--looking like Nikki Minaj!

"Hi! I'm Nikki Minaj! I have no sense of style and I think that if I throw enough random, odd items on me I might be mistaken for Lady's Gaga's occasional fashion genius! But nope!In reality I'm a horrible hot mess--if you want to be a hot mess please take all directions from me! You'll be a real deal fashion disaster in no time!"--Nikki Minaj. True Story.

My issues with Forever 21 runs so deep that I even once decided that I should work for them. My momentary desire to work in Forever 21 was hugely fueled by the fact that I thought I could bring order to its extreme chaos (and I could get great discounts on items I wanted). And part of me still really wants to believe that. But in all honesty, its too huge a task for a little someone like me to undertake. 

For me, Forever 21 is a place I always avoided because after twenty minutes in the store I would get a throbbing migraine. You shoppers out there know what I'm talking about.   It's the MACYs migraine, the KOHLS migraine--when there's so many items to process that your brain overloads and it throbs and throbs for hours instead.  I would find a color and a cut and a style and would want to find something similar to it because it missed the mark for me--and it would take me on a journey up and down the floor levels and across the display floors. Omg. If something is similar to something, it should be next to it! A shimmer skirt? Thigh length? Great--where is one in blue? Oh wait, that is somewhere else? It's not next to it? What--it's across the floor? No , wait, wrong directions--it's down at another level? Why, why?!! And then comes my migraine, and I leave with either nothing or something I half- like because I was too overwhelmed to find exactly what I really wanted. Oh no, not good.

As a shopper who doesn't have tons of cash to spend, I believe in putting my money to work in the best way possible. But Forever 21 can take my money and eat it up because I was too exhausted to find my true gem of an item. That's not fair--and it's probably the true source of their financial success. You want so many things, yet you don't know why and often times you do not find exactly what you truly wanted to buy so you settle for what you can get your hands on. Let's go over Forever 21's faults and benefits a little more indepthly...

A: Style Organization

A diverse collections of different girls' at Forever 21

A great reward of this shop is that it's set up to cater to a varieties of specific girls with a specific sense of style. Forever 21 easily gets a general A+ for style organization. More than any other clothing shop out there, I know that I can walk into Forever 21 and find what I would need if I were preppy, punk, hipster, etc. They have their style organization in the bag! 

You will enter the section of let's say, a preppy girl. You will find what you will need to complete the preppy girl look--shades, the vintage hat, the modestly cut pants, the collared shirts, the bow tie, the plaid. Bam. All there. You just choose what you want to use and you are done. There are many variations of this look, and you might find yourself buying two or more of the same thing in a different color or pattern. Regardless , you can achieve the look you desire.

The sections are so clearly defined as being based around a specific "type" of girl that you identify whether the section is for you or not. The one problem is that although Forever 21 gets an A+ in style organization, they get a B- in actual clothing organization.

B: Poor Clothing Organization
Poor clothing organization is the root of all evil in Forever 21 because its a combination of clothing organized in a hazardous way and too much of it too. Forever 21's staff puts together outfits that suits the mannequin with the colors that they want to express it, but there are other clothing in different colors and cuts that are basically the same thing--but they are assigned to different sections . If you're scracthing your head now, you should be! Because this kind of nonsensical categorization is what leads to my typical shopping migraine when I've been flooded with too many options!

     
  
Do you see the mannequin pedestal in this picture? Looks familiar? Well it should--because that's the way most  sections look in Forever  21--it's a hot mess with random clothing thrown together in a pile where it truly doesn't belong.  There are the nice and nifty window views of Forever 21 clothing, but when you go to other levels and actually go through the store sections, you find that shopping in sync can be a total nightmare. You find one top and you need it in a small , but all you see is large--but underneath the jeans on the pedestal no where near the other items is what you are looking for.  What? Seriously? 

I understand that many, many people come through these stores everyday--but the amount of clothing piles and disorganized clothing isn't the result of one hour--it's the result of half a day at the least.  But when I turn to look at the employees on the floor, they are usually standing around next to clothing racks, chatting about their random drama and not attending to these messy piles.  In my opinion, the jobs of the employees is to provide-among other things-their services in keeping the sections neat and tidy. My other problems with these sections is that  apparently some of the management in the store assume that everything is more organized for you because it is color-coordinated. --even if the plain red top has no business being next to the dressy one because it falls completely out of context!

I know the set up of the sections dictates otherwise, but color-coordination doesn't settle everything. It does however, give the illusion that everything is "in order". It's this illusion that lures the customer in and lulls the employees into the false sense of knowledge of where everything is . It could not be farther from the truth! This leads me into my next discussion about the employees of Forever 21.

C: Forever 21 Employees: Well Meaning but Almost as Clueless as You!

Based on my experiences, there are three types of Forever 21 employees--those that believe that they know the store through and through; those that don't care  about the customers and are only there to get paid and "discovered"and  those that barely know anything about the store but try their hardest to make up for it. The majority fall into the category of those that try their hardest to provide you with the best service--in spite of the gaping holes in their knowledge.

When going up to various different customer reps in four different Forever 21 stores , I played the role of different types of shoppers that come through their stores everyday. I was the clueless shopper,  the fast-stressed out shopper, the casual shopper and the expert shopper just to mix it up with each customer service representative I came across.  I wanted to test their responses to each situation presented to them.The employees that couldn't be bothered to help me really got under my skin.

I have a great dislike for those that are more focused on making sure THEY look good instead of making YOU their primary focus .They are the ones that make you feel apprehensive about shopping at Forever 21 and make you doubt your own self worth .  

Forever 21 employees should be as warm, inviting
and helpful as this pix at ALL times! 

They are also the ones that allow you to walk out of that store with horribly mismatched outfits. I asked a few employees if a top went with a skirt  (when it absolutely did not) and they shrugged and said " sure it looks good" .   I felt my heart drop! I took the two worse color combination in the world--neon orange and neon pink--and found them in two separates--and I put them together. The top didn't even go well with the cut of the skirt--there was no redemption in this outfit at all. Yet instead of warning me, they let it slide. Shocked I bought out a pinstripped short cut turtleneck with a pair of purple neon leggings that were two sizes too big on me--they were literally gathering on my legs! I asked them for their opinion--once again , they said it looked great and I should get two of them! Wow. Mind you that these workers  I spoke to looked like they were dressed up for a photo shoot with  Lucky Magazine...aka, they know their fashion inside out. So when I got those horrid responses from them, all that I can say is that it was super NOT COOL and I was thoroughly insulted. All they wanted was to make a sell and my actual fashion sense was being thrown out the window! 

The zebra-print top that I retrieved 
from Forever 21

Thankfully, however, the majority of the employees there aren't as terrible as these. They attempt to assist you even if they fail. Some fail miserably and are as clueless as some shoppers around them. Those are sad employees. However some of the employees go the extra mile to accommodate you and those guys are real winners in my book. I once asked an employee to help me find a top that I said I had seen only a few minutes before but could not recall its exact location. It was a top with a lion face printed on it. In the end, the customer service rep could not find it for me and instead brought me a zebra print top. She told me how pretty it was and even though it wasn't a lion, it would look great on me. Plus she supplied me with a bottom that complimented the top color wise and style wise perfectly. I actually knew where the lion print top was...she missed it three times while looking for it...but I was so impressed with her efforts that I bought the top anyways. That's the kind of customer service that I expect that makes shopping at Forever 21 a much more bearable and rewarding experience.

I admire this majority because they are working against a slightly flawed system. So much inventory comes in on a daily basis that its difficult to keep count of where everything is. Plus, they have to  figure out what is selling and what isn't selling so that they can know what loads to push or sell to other vendors at a discounted price. And their training for doing so is highly inefficient! So hardworking Forever 21 employees who are thrown into the lion's den, I salute you! Also, to the few Forever 21 employees that managed to study and learn the whole store in its entirety inspite of so many road blocks , you are quite the rare breed and they need to make more of you!

This entry wouldn't be complete without me throwing in a few common lines to be heard from Forever 21 employees:

"If this top is in another size and it's not on that rack, then it could be on the other racks in this area--I don't know which one."

"The shoes are everywhere on every floor. "

"You saw that top over here in that color? I didn't know it came in that color"

" If you don't see it, it's not in stock anymore" ( this one said it without looking, and I happened to know the tops were only a few feet away from her!)

"The bags are all over in the middle of the store, the corners of the store..."

Ah , I could go on and on and on with the insufficient responses I received from Forever 21 employees, but I won't. I get it. It's too hard to look for, there are soooo many tasks to complete in one day, etc. But at least put more thought into your responses--I'm a paying customer not your annoying mother. 
Example :
Mother: " Honey where are you going?"
Daughter : " OUT mom."
Mother: " Where exactly is it that you're going and who are  you going with?"
Daughter :" Omg mom , you don't know them and I'm going OUT. Omg!". 
Yup. My interactions with some of the employees felt just like that conversation

D) Prices

Black-belted chiffon dress. Only 20 bucks and super classy 

Unbelievable. Overly tempting. Totally affordable. This is what makes Forever 21 the IT place for cheap and current clothing. Another great thing about the prices at Forever 21 is that no matter what season it is, you always can find a sale and the prices themselves are a major steal!

I was able to finance an entire season wardrobe in one shopping

This furry short-cut vest--only 32 bucks! 
Looks fabulous

 session at this place. They had everything that I wanted in that store, even though I had to search all over to find exactly what I wanted. Normally, getting a full season wardrobe usually entails me bouncing from three to four different stores to get all that I want, from jewelery to a basic hat--Forever 21 has it all for me. Not to mention that also normally it would cost me up to $500 for a full season wardrobe.  But with Forever 21 , it costs me significantly less.

This wonderfully chic zipper jacket is only 27 bucks--
even though it looks like it could easily be
at least 80 bucks! It manages to balance both the edgy and classy world
with the greatest of ease!

You guys have NO problem at all in the price department. You get an A+ for it hands down! 


Conclusion

Whew! I crammed as much as I could without making this into an lengthy survey! Forever 21 has what it takes to make it, but the areas that they come up short in seriously need improvement. Yes, Forever 21 will still make money. Yes, people will still shop there. But for crying out loud, please make the shopping experience more pleasurable! Cut back on some of your inventory. Reduce the amount of clothing that you have per section. Learn to organize the sections better and keep them nice and neat. Train your employees with more infinite knowledge of such a vastly wonderful store. Please help the everyday shoppers go through your lovely clothing boutique and not have to suffer a migraine. We like you guys already , you know this. Now it's time to make yourselves more accessible. 

My fav color is pink--specifically the neon colored kind--and soon this bag will be mine! 

Well that is all for now! I will be continuing this series on the Dirt on the Trendiest Stores as I visit more clothing boutiques! Also, I will be doing a new blog focused on the Coach brand alone! Why? Because Coach items can range from extremely affordable to extremely expensive and Coach is generally a classy brand with a modern twist! Anyways, goodbye for now and as always, get some Sugar and Spice in your life! ^_^