North Face and Vans closing in Philly, Abercrombie coming in 2025. What’s next for retail in the city?

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In 2025, expect to see more retail turnover in Center City as two stores are slated to close and at least one will open.

Outdoor clothing business The North Face and popular skateboard shoemaker Vans are closing. It’s expected that Abercrombie will open in 2025, but a timeline has not yet been released.

Both of the closing retail brands are owned by the Denver-based VF Corporation, which was founded in Pennsylvania as the Reading Glove and Mitten Manufacturing Company in 1899.

VF Corporation also owns brands such as Timberland shoes, Dickies clothing and JanSport backpacks.

Seventeen employees at the North Face near Rittenhouse Square are expected to lose their jobs by the end of January 2025. The store closure coincides with the end of its lease, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act letter on file with the state.

Neither Abercrombie nor VF Corporation responded to a request to comment for this news story.

By the end of February, another 12 workers at the authorized retailer of Vans near 17th and Walnut streets will also be laid off as its lease is also over, records show.

VF Corporation told the state in a letter that its leases were terminated, but it was not immediately clear whether that was the end of the lease or that the terms of the agreement ended earlier than negotiated. Since the company was leasing the retail space, it “did not give employees the right to buy this retail establishment,” according to the layoff notice letter.

The Vans location cost the company about $231,300 in payroll to about a dozen employees, between November 2023 and 2024. The company estimated that about $7,621 in local tax revenue will be lost as the result of the closure, but did not specify whether that was a monthly or annual figure.

Vans are still sold across Philadelphia, mostly inside other general department stores, such as Nordstrom Rack at 17th and Chestnut streets. Likewise, there are still Vans and North Face retail stores in King of Prussia Mall.

In May 2020, the previous Vans shop on Walnut Street near the same intersection caught on fire during social unrest after the murder of George Floyd by police in Minnesota. The historic building, which also had Dr. Martens shoes and a McDonalds, was razed and has since reopened as a beer garden.

What’s next for retail in the city?

The commercial corridor that includes Walnut Street has been the focus of a pedestrian-only shopping experiment through the Center City District known as Open Streets as one way to boost retail sales.

Even on an unseasonably warm day in late December around lunchtime, the shopping district was bustling with visitors popping in and out of stores.

Center City neighborhoods have added more full-time residents — about 75,000 people — which has increased demand for retailers in the past decade. For example, there are approximately 50 retail storefronts along Walnut Street between 15th and 19th streets.

And that’s where brands want their physical stores to be, said David Patterson, associate partner of Clarkston Consulting, which works on retail brand strategies for clients.

“Brands want to be where their customers are and as great as the digital world is and omnipresent that it is, the physical space [for retail stores] is not going anywhere,” he said.

Sometimes that means more experiments in retail, he said.

“We’ve seen kind of fits and starts with the brands experimenting with showrooming,” he said about the practice of using a physical store as a taste of what the business sells, rather than stock all its products for immediate sale. “Showrooming does a lot from a cost optimization standpoint in terms of lowering the amount of inventory you need to carry in a store, really relying on central points of distribution and allowing customers to experience your product, touch and feel the garment they may want to buy.”

Most often, a showroom-type retail storefront may be adopted by businesses that typically sell online directly to consumers.

When retailers do invest in new physical stores, it’s not the same layout as older locations, he said.

“We’re seeing backrooms expand to facilitate more shipping,” he said. “And seamless in store returns is going to continue to be a priority in 2025.”

That’s likely because online shoppers often purchase several sizes of the same garment to ensure the clothing fits, relying on free returns for the extra items.

But it’s more common now that retailers are charging online customers to return goods through the mail, such as Zara, DSW, J. Crew, JCPenney, Abercrombie, American Eagle Outfitters and Dillards. That even includes online retail behemoth Amazon in mid-2024 for some items.

Most retailers now instead offer only a free return for an online order if taken back to a brick-and-mortar location — which encourages the companies to have retail near their online customers.

It does not appear that Vans nor North Face charges customers for returns, whether online or in store, but does keep the original shipping fee.