IntroductionAmerican Apparel is a well-known clothing brand and company around the world. Basically, AA is a clothing manufacturer, distributor and retailer headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. Today, everyone knows that this company is a sweatshop-free, vertically integrated company with a strong CRS position that strongly supports workers' rights and attempts to legalize illegal foreign labor in American industry clothing. American Apparel is also known as a company that rejects typical fashion advertisements and does its own design, marketing and advertising of fashionable clothing. If American Apparel is such a cool and innocent company, how come it has lost consumer interest and experienced declining sales? This research will take an in-depth look at the key AA platforms mentioned above and perform an analysis to examine whether any of these platforms have contributed to the current business downturn. Additionally, American Apparel and its business model will be compared to its major industry competitors, in order to discover what other business models (if any) are working successfully. Dov Charney and American ApparelDov Charney is a Canadian-born founder, president and chef. Chief Executive Officer of American Apparel Inc. According to Reuters (2013), AA operated 251 wholly owned retail stores in twenty countries as of January 31, 2013 and still operates an online website to this day that serves customers in over sixty countries across the world. It's no easy task running such a large company, and it's no wonder that AA employs over twelve thousand employees worldwide. It is also understandable that competition is very high in the fashion clothing industry as it has many major players middle of paper......businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2009/ db20090518_942184.htm [November 18, 2013].16. American Apparel Inc. (2013). Financial History: 10-K Annual Report. Available at: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/APP/2812271912x0xS1336545-13-9/1336545/filing.pdf (accessed November 20, 2013).17. H&M (2012). Annual Report 2012. Available at: http://about.hm.com/content/dam/hm/about/documents/en/Annual%20Report/Annual-Report-2012_en.pdf (accessed November 20, 2013).18. Hansen S. 2012, “How Zara Became the World’s Largest Fashion Retailer,” The New York Times, November 9. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/11/magazine/how-zara-grew-into-the-worlds-largest-fashion-retailer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 [November 19, 2013 ].19. Inditex (2013). Inditex press kit. Available at: http://www.inditex.com/en/downloads/ITX-Dossier-p12-en.pdf [November 19 2013].