Abercrombie & Fitch’s svelte customers are also starved for clothing.
The pricey teen retailer — whose CEO Mike Jeffries lately has come under fire for saying he doesn’t want fat people in his stores — posted an embarrassing quarterly sales drop that was made worse by kinks in its supply chain.
Abercrombie’s sales at stores open at least a year, or same-store sales, a closely watched measure of performance, plunged 15 percent in the first quarter — a shockingly steep drop that lead to a loss of more than $7 million and sent the company’s stock tumbling.
The shares yesterday lost $4.35, or 8 percent, to close at $50.02.
The problem: internal snafus that delayed shipments of spring fashions to stores, leaving shelves and racks spotty at the height of the season.
Particularly disgraceful, critics said, was the fact that the delays — which were responsible for two-thirds of the nasty sales drop — were caused by botched efforts to speed up the clothing deliveries.
“You’ve got to be a really poorly run organization to lose that many sales because you couldn’t get inventory into the channels,” one disgusted Abercrombie shareholder told The Post yesterday.
Investors are the latest group to get miffed at Jeffries, who has taken fresh heat this month for comments that were dug up online from a seven-year-old interview, in which he said Abercrombie’s strategy is cater to the popular crowd.
“We go after the cool kids,” Jeffries told Salon.com. “A lot of people don’t belong, and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”
Critics have blasted Abercrombie in particular for not carrying larger sizes in women’s clothing, even as it stations half-clothed, athletic models outside its flagship stores.
Top execs met with a teen who collected 68,000 signatures on Change.org demanding that the company change its sizing policies.
Nevertheless, Abercrombie has yet to signal any plans to add XL and XXL sizes at its stores.
A statement from Jeffries last week said his comments were taken out of context.
But he didn’t explain how, and stopped short of an apology, further irking critics.
This week, the retailer buckled and said in a written statement, “We sincerely regret and apologize for any offense caused.”
For the quarter ended May 4, Abercrombie recorded a loss of $7.2 million, or 9 cents a share, after losing $21.3 million, or 25 cents a share, during the same period a year earlier. Analysts had expected a loss of 5 cents a share.
Revenue slid 8.9 percent to $838.8 million.
In the US, sales dropped 17 percent to $534.9 million, more than offsetting a 10 percent boost in international sales that was driven by new stores in Asia.