History
The chain, originally known as Fashion 21, was intended at first mostly for middle-aged women. The store was founded in Los Angeles, California in 1984 by Do Won Chang (Hangul: 장도원) and his wife Jin Sook Chang (Hangul: 장진숙). The first Fashion 21 store opened on April 21, 1984. It was located at 5637 N. Figueroa St. in the Highland Park district of Los Angeles. The store sized at only 900 square feet (84 m2). It is still in operation and bears the chain's original name. Trendy designs seen in South Korea were sold and targeted to the Los Angeles Korean American community. However, people from many other ethnicities and nationalities began noticing the trend-setting fashion designs and the store became increasingly popular. By the end of the first year sales were reported to have risen from $35,000 to $700,000. Fashion 21 eventually expanded at the rate of a new store every six months and changed the Fashion 21 brand name to its current name, Forever 21.
In 1989, Forever 21 opened its 11th store and first store located in a mall, at the Panorama Mall in Panorama City, California. Forever 21 increased its presence by expanding the average size to 5,000 square feet (460 m2) per store. Since then, Forever 21 has been running specialty stores in major mall locations nationwide. In 1995, the chain opened its first location outside of California, which was at Mall of the Americas in Miami, Florida. Adding new stores every six months, Forever 21 had reached a total of 40 stores by 1997.
Creating its own prototype store in Northridge Fashion Center, Forever 21 has employed its proprietary design concepts to all its stores since then. By this time Forever 21 also increased its average size to 9,000 square feet (840 m2) per store in prime spots of top tier malls. In January 2010, Forever 21 opened a massive, 85,000 square feet, 2-tier store at the Los Cerritos Center in Cerritos, California, their first flagship department store location.
Forever 21 has received attention in the media for printing "John 3:16" on the bottom of their trademark yellow bags. A spokeswoman from Forever 21's LA headquarters said the Biblical quote is a "demonstration of the owners' Christian faith." (A similar practice has been maintained by the In-N-Out Burger and Chick-Fil-A chains, which prints the quote "John 3:16" on the bottom of some of its cups.)
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