Who owns Forever 21? A company that once ran nearly 800 stores worldwide doesn’t disappear quietly, and Forever 21 didn’t. Its U.S. retail business is gone as of 2025, but the name itself is still very much alive — just under entirely different control than the people who actually built it.
Who owns Forever 21?
Do Won Chang left South Korea for Los Angeles in 1981 with nothing close to a retail empire in mind — he worked a series of jobs just to get by before he and his wife Jin Sook scraped together about $11,000 to open a single store in 1984. They called it “Fashion 21,” set up shop on Figueroa Street, and built their early customer base within LA’s Korean-American community by selling cheap, on-trend clothing fast.
It worked almost immediately — that first store reportedly brought in $700,000 in its first year alone. Word spread, the concept scaled, and within two decades the chain had pushed into malls across the entire country under a new name: Forever 21. By 2015, the company had grown into a genuine retail giant — $4.4 billion in annual revenue, around 800 locations globally, and roughly 43,000 people on payroll.
The Cracks Nobody Fixed in Time
Here’s the uncomfortable part of the story: the same rapid expansion that built Forever 21 into a household name also outpaced the company’s ability to manage it properly. While digital-native fast-fashion competitors were pouring resources into online infrastructure, Forever 21 leaned almost entirely on its physical mall presence — a bet that aged badly as shopping habits shifted.
That mismatch eventually forced the company into its first Chapter 11 bankruptcy. What emerged from it in February 2020 was a new ownership trio — Simon Property Group, Brookfield Property Partners, and Authentic Brands Group — who picked up the company for roughly $81 million. Given that this was a brand once valued in the billions, the price tag alone tells you how far things had already fallen.
Round Two Came Faster Than Anyone Expected
The rescue didn’t hold. Five years later, in March 2025, the U.S. operating company filed for bankruptcy a second time. This round had no recovery plan attached to it — by the end of April 2025, all 354 remaining American stores had shut their doors for good, capping off three fiscal years in which the brand had bled more than $400 million in cumulative losses.
What actually killed it this time was a pricing war Forever 21 simply couldn’t win. Ultra-low-cost competitors like Shein and Temu had been exploiting a tariff loophole that let them ship goods into the U.S. without paying the import duties traditional retailers absorbed — and that structural advantage, compounded over time, gutted Forever 21’s ability to compete on price in a category where price was everything.
Authentic Brands Group: The Last One Standing
So who’s actually in charge of what’s left? Authentic Brands Group, led by CEO Jamie Salter, now owns the Forever 21 name and all its intellectual property outright. ABG runs a portfolio that already spans brands like Reebok, Brooks Brothers, and Nautica — companies where the playbook is consistent: license the name out to operators elsewhere rather than run physical stores directly.
That’s the path forward here too. ABG has made clear it plans to license Forever 21 to retail operators in international markets, and the brand’s stores outside the U.S., along with its e-commerce operations, have continued running independently of the American collapse.
For what it’s worth, even Salter himself doesn’t seem thrilled about how this played out — he’s been candid in admitting the acquisition didn’t go the way he’d hoped, calling it one of the worst calls of his career.
The Partners Who Walked Away
The other two original buyers from 2020 aren’t part of the picture anymore. Brookfield Property Partners was first to go, selling off its 25% stake back in 2021 for $63 million — a relatively quick exit once it became clear the turnaround wasn’t sticking.
Simon Property Group, the largest mall landlord in the U.S., stuck around longer, managing operations alongside ABG through a joint structure called SPARC Group. But when SPARC reorganized into a new entity, Catalyst Brands, at the end of 2024, Forever 21 was pointedly left out of that restructuring — Simon had already been pulling back from retail ownership broadly, treating it as a side business compared to its real estate core.
There’s a strange wrinkle in here too: Shein actually picked up a minority stake in SPARC Group back in 2023, with SPARC holding a small reciprocal stake in Shein at the same time. Given that Shein’s own pricing model is part of what eventually sank Forever 21, that cross-investment didn’t end up changing the outcome at all.
Where the Name Actually Came From
Chang’s original instinct with “Fashion 21” was simple — speak directly to shoppers in their early twenties chasing affordable, current style.
As the business grew past that original niche, the name evolved into “Forever 21,” built around an idea Chang talked about often: that 21 represented youth at its absolute peak — full of energy and self-expression — and that “forever” extended an invitation to hold onto that feeling indefinitely through clothes that never stopped feeling current.
It was a smart piece of branding for a long time. It just eventually outlasted the business model underneath it.
What Was Actually on the Racks
At its height, the company sold across a genuinely broad range: women’s clothing made up the core of the business — dresses, activewear, swimwear — alongside men’s basics, kids’ and girls’ sizing that mirrored adult fashion trends, accessories, a full beauty and skincare lineup, and footwear from sneakers to heels.
Much of that catalog still exists today through the brand’s website and its surviving international stores.
A Mission That Couldn’t Outpace the Competition
There was never one formal mission statement behind Forever 21, but its identity was consistent for decades: trend-right clothing priced for people without much money to spend, refreshed weekly so customers could stay current without paying full retail elsewhere.
After the 2020 ownership change, the new owners tried steering the brand toward stronger e-commerce and international licensing — a strategy shift that, in hindsight, simply arrived after the competitive window had already closed.
FAQs
Who owns Forever 21 now?
Authentic Brands Group holds full ownership of the trademarks and intellectual property.
Are any Forever 21 stores still open?
Not in the U.S. — all 354 stores closed in 2025. International locations and the online store remain active.
Why did it go bankrupt a second time?
Pricing pressure from Shein and Temu, who benefited from a tariff loophole American retailers couldn’t access.
Who started Forever 21?
Do Won Chang and his wife Jin Sook, who opened the first store in Los Angeles in 1984.
Is there any connection between Forever 21 and Shein?
Yes — Shein held a minority stake in the joint venture managing Forever 21, though it didn’t prevent the brand’s decline.
