Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is expanding its abercrombie kids brand through a new global partnership with Haddad Brands, adding wholesale distribution and new product categories including infant and toddler. The move gives Abercrombie Kids a larger international footprint while allowing the parent company to keep designing and selling the line in its own channels.
New partnership to expand Abercrombie kids globally
In the announcement, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. said the agreement with Haddad Brands is designed to grow Abercrombie Kids beyond its existing presence in owned stores and online channels. The deal adds new distribution through Haddad Brands’ network of retail partners around the world, positioning the children’s label for long-term global growth.
Under the partnership, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. will continue to design, produce, and sell Abercrombie Kids through its own stores and e-commerce, while Haddad Brands focuses on opening up new doors and markets for the brand. The arrangement lets the company diversify its channel mix without giving up creative or product control.
Infants and toddlers join the assortment
Today, Abercrombie Kids primarily serves ages 5–14, but the new partnership includes plans to extend the line into younger age brackets. As part of the agreement, Haddad Brands will help grow the product offering by adding infant and toddler categories to the existing range.
This expanded assortment will allow Abercrombie Kids to capture families earlier and potentially keep them in the brand for longer as children move through different size ranges. It also sets the children’s label up to compete more directly with head-to-toe kids’ brands that already span baby through teen.
Why Abercrombie is betting on kids
Chief Executive Officer Fran Horowitz said, “With our abercrombie Kids brand, we have created comfortable, high-quality apparel for children that allows them to feel exceptional every day.” She said the partnership supports A&F Co.’s efforts to diversify its channel mix and drive “sustainable, profitable growth” by engaging new customers globally.
For Abercrombie & Fitch Co., children’s apparel has become a key part of the company’s turnaround story, offering repeat-purchase potential and a way to bring families into the broader brand ecosystem. Working with a specialist licensee gives the company access to wholesale expertise and scale in kidswear without building that infrastructure from scratch.
Haddad Brands’ role and expertise
Haddad Brands is an established player in licensed children’s wear, with a portfolio of global brands and a network of department store and specialty retail partners. In the release, President Jack Haddad said, “We are honored and proud to collaborate with the abercrombie kids team and the talented people at Abercrombie & Fitch Co.” He said the goal is to make abercrombie kids products accessible to a broader audience in the United States and internationally.
Timeline and showroom rollout
According to the partnership announcement, the first collection under the new arrangement will be the Fall/Back to School 2025 season for Abercrombie Kids. That line is set to be shown in Haddad Brands’ showrooms globally starting in September 2025, giving international buyers time to plan assortments for the following year’s school season.
The focus for the initial rollout will be building a strong wholesale base for the core kids range while introducing the new infant and toddler categories. Retail partners will be able to see the full age span together, from baby through early teen, which can strengthen merchandising stories in multi-brand environments.
Channel mix and wholesale strategy
The Abercrombie Kids partnership aligns with broader moves by Abercrombie & Fitch Co. to rebalance its business across stores, digital, and wholesale. In recent years, the company has leaned on direct-to-consumer channels for margin and brand control, but wholesale offers a way to reach new geographies and customers more efficiently.
By keeping design and owned retail in-house while outsourcing distribution expansion to Haddad Brands, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is aiming for a hybrid model: control of brand and product with shared execution on reach. If successful, this structure could give Abercrombie Kids a presence in hundreds of additional points of sale without the capital outlay of new stores.
What this means for wear and retail
For the wider kidswear market, the partnership underscores how legacy brands are using licensing and wholesale to scale quickly into new regions and categories. As department stores and sporting goods chains look for strong kids’ brands to anchor family shopping trips, labels like Abercrombie Kids gain an opportunity to step into more prominent floor space.
With infant and toddler now in the mix, the brand has a clearer path to becoming a long-term wardrobe option for families from the first years of life through early teens.
