By Jeff, 8 Asians
After managing to alienate significant numbers of Asians, Asian Americans, Muslims, African Americans, Hispanics, overweight, and disabled people, Abercrombie & Fitch has found – surprise – that declining sales forced it into a quarterly loss . In an attempt to regain some lost sales, the company has slightly retreated on its position of catering only to what the company’s CEO calls the “all American beautiful people” by now including sizes for larger people . Abercrombie & Fitch is a case study of what happens can happen when a company doesn’t pay proper attention to the diversity of its potential customers.
Abercrombie & Fitch
Diversity can apply to aftshirt 600×400 Abercrombie & Fitch Sales Decline: How Disrespecting Diversity can be Bad for Business many facets of people. Racial diversity is one aspect. In 2002, these Abercrombie & Fitch T-Shirts playing on stereotypes managed to infuriate many Asian Americans. Asians were upset by this model (shown below) brought into South Korea to open up one of their Hollister subsidiary’s stores and who later mocked Koreans over twitter. Lawsuits have been brought by Hispanics and African Americans who say they weren’t hired or were only to work away from customers because they didn’t have the “right image.” Abercrombie & Fitch targets 18-24 year olds, but that demographic is increasingly non-white in the US, not to mention already that way in the rest of the world. Why would they want to alienate a growing segment of potential customers, especially one that has large and increasing buying power?
There are other kinds of diversity that Abercrombie & Fitch seem to dislike. The company lost a lawsuit filed by a Muslim woman working at Abercrombie & Fitch who was fired for wearing a hijab . This wasn’t the first case . Abercrombie & Fitch and its subsidiaries have also been sued regarding handicap access , forcing a women with a prosthetic arm to work away from customers , and preventing a woman from helping her autistic sister try on clothes in a dressing room . They have even managed to alienate people who like Taylor Swift .
Read the full article by Jeff from 8 Asians.
