Abercrombie to Enter Canada

NEW ALBANY, OH-Retailer Abercrombie & Fitch plans to enter Canada next year, said Bob Singer, the retailer’s president and COO during its third quarter conference call yesterday. Singer did not specify which chains it would open North of the border or how many stores the company seeks to open there.

The retailer, with 764 stores in the United States, took a $32.9 million charge from the settlement of a class action diversity lawsuit over the quarter. That led to net income coming in at $40.1 million, down from $50.5 million the same year-ago period. The company’s same-store sales increased 1% during the quarter.

Abercrombie officials said that they might start replacing some of their kids units with their Hollister stores, which targets high school-aged consumers. “There are some kids stores where we hypothesize that we could do more business with a Hollister store,” Singer said, explaining that the children’s store are smaller than the typical Hollister. “We need to experiment with this, and if it works we could roll it out in a number of locations.”