Urban Outfitters History
Earlier company descriptions, brand line-ups, store counts and photographs from the history of Urban Outfitters, kept for historical reference.
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The Company Description of Its Time
Urban Outfitters is a lifestyle retailer dedicated to inspiring customers through a unique combination of product, creativity and cultural understanding. Founded in 1970 in a small space across the street from the University of Pennsylvania, it operates over 200 stores in the United States, Canada and Europe, offering experiential retail environments and a curated mix of women's and men's apparel, accessories and home products.
The Brands Around the Flagship
Each URBN brand serves a different customer. Anthropologie, launched in 1992, is a portal of discovery for creative, educated women, mixing clothing, accessories, gifts and home decor. Free People - the name of the very first 1970 store - lives on as the group's bohemian women's brand and wholesale line. BHLDN covers weddings, Terrain covers garden and home, and the subscription rental service Nuuly has added a rental model to the group's retail mix.
1970: A College Project Becomes a Store
The year was 1970. Dick Hayne was just 23 years old when he and college roommate Scott Belair came up with the idea to open a retail store - Belair was in search of a topic for an entrepreneurial class he was taking at the time. The first store, originally called Free People, was located in a small space across the street from the University of Pennsylvania. Its mission was to provide second-hand clothing, furniture, jewelry and home decor for college-aged customers in a casual, fun environment, and from that first West Philadelphia store the company has continually strived to connect with customers through unique products and engaging store design.
Free People, Anthropologie and the Wholesale Line
Meg Hayne created Urban Outfitters' private label division, which supported product exclusive to Urban Outfitters. Demand was almost immediate; to meet it, she and Dick decided to create a wholesale line. It was so well received that Dick separated the businesses. For a while the line took on many personalities - Bulldog, Ecote, Cooperative, Anthropologie - and then in 1984 a new life was breathed into the name Free People.
By the 1990s, the historical record customer was entering a new life stage and longed for a store to indulge her creative side. Realizing this was not an isolated phenomenon, Dick Hayne built a lifestyle brand for creative, educated and affluent 30-to-45-year-old women: Anthropologie was born, and in 1992 the first standalone store opened in a refurbished automobile shop in Wayne, Pennsylvania - a portal of discovery offering clothing, accessories, gifts and home decor reflecting her personal style and individual passions.
The Millennium Brings the Catalog and the Web
The millennium brought a new shopping experience that was not a physical location. In 1998, Anthropologie released its first catalog, with circulation more than doubling before the end of the year, and in August of the same year Anthropologie.com was established. Site visits and online orders came in well above initial expectations, which fueled investment in future e-commerce efforts - and before long the group's other brands had opened web stores of their own, beginning the direct-to-consumer business that now runs beside the stores.
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