Abacrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

[ValleyDwellerNorth]

remember?

 

I know this is going back some time ago but we need to remember how this company operates.

VDN

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ABERCROMBIE & GLITCH

Asian Americans rip retailer for stereotypes on T-shirts

 

Thursday, April 18, 2002

 

http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2002/04/18/bu_wong2.jpg

 

Days after hitting store shelves, new Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts featuring caricatured faces with slanted eyes and rice-paddy hats had Asian Americans in the Bay Area and beyond demanding a public apology from the retailer.

 

The Midwestern clothier, which targets the young, affluent and active, said it was surprised by the mounting controversy over the T-shirt designs.

 

One has a slogan that says, "Wong Brothers Laundry Service -- Two Wongs Can Make It White." Beside the prominent lettering are two smiling figures in conical hats harking back to 1900s popular-culture depictions of Chinese men.

 

"We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt," said Hampton Carney,

 

with Paul Wilmot Communications in New York, the public relations firm where Abercrombie referred a reporter's call.

 

"I wouldn't know how they could think that," said Austin Chung, 23, of Palo Alto, business manager for the quarterly Asian-focused magazine Monolid. "Abercrombie & Fitch is producing popular culture, and they cater to the views of the majority. You have to ask yourself, who benefits, who gets empowerment, from these kinds of images? It denigrates Asian men."

 

As word of the new T-shirts in Abercrombie stores spread yesterday among university students and on far-reaching e-mail lists, plans shaped up for a late-night meeting in a Stanford dorm lounge.

 

The subject: What to do about the series of themed T-shirts the retailer -- known for edgy advertising and skin-bearing advertising -- introduced Friday in stores and on its Web site, http://www.abercrombie.com.

 

"Wok-N-Bowl -- Let the Good Times Roll -- Chinese Food & Bowling," one design reads, with a stereotypical image similar to the figures on the Wong Brothers shirt.

 

"Abercrombie and Fitch Buddha Bash -- Get Your Buddha on the Floor," reads another shirt that shares display space in the youth-oriented, casual-clothing store.

 

 

'TRULY AND DEEPLY SORRY'

The shirts were designed to appeal to young Asian shoppers with a sense of humor, Carney told The Chronicle yesterday.

 

The shirts were available for sale yesterday in the Abercrombie store at San Francisco Shopping Centre on Market Street. Whether they will remain on the shelves was unclear yesterday, the spokesman said.

 

"We are truly and deeply sorry we've offended people," said Carney, adding that he had spent much of the afternoon returning calls of complaint, many of them from Stanford students.

 

"We never single out any one group to poke fun at," Carney said. "We poke fun at everybody, from women to flight attendants to baggage handlers, to football coaches, to Irish Americans to snow skiers. There's really no group we haven't teased."

 

Abercrombie might consider rethinking that approach when marketing to -- or representing images of -- racial and ethnic groups, said Michael Chang, vice chairman of Stanford's Asian American Students' Association, organizers of last night's meeting on campus.

 

"It's really misleading as to what Asian people are," Chang said. "The stereotypes they depict are more than a century old. You're seeing laundry service. You're seeing basically an entire religion and philosophy being trivialized."

 

Abercrombie should apologize publicly, starting with a message from corporate headquarters, Chang said.

 

The Asian students' association at Stanford yesterday was encouraging calls to the company.

 

 

EVEN STORE MANAGER SURPRISED

Chang said Stanford students who complained to individual Bay Area store managers quickly realized that was futile because the merchandise decisions were being made at a higher level.

 

Stanford senior BJ Lee, 21, said one store manager acknowledged even he had been surprised when the T-shirts arrived at his store.

 

"We tried to get them pulled, but we weren't successful," Lee said. "Managers don't have authority."

 

The online chat about Abercrombie doesn't stop at Stanford.

 

"This story is going around the whole Asian e-mail circle," said Kevin Choi,

 

a 21-year-old student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said the chorus of angry voices was growing at MIT and near the campus. Some students organized public protests in front of Abercrombie stores, he said.

 

"I think they need to apologize, to make a public statement, but I also think they need to start looking at their whole strategy for how they portray people," Choi said. "Maybe it sells in the suburbs . . . but their whole national marketing image is buff, tanned male and female models without any Asian representation."

 

Last year, Abercrombie & Fitch caught flak from some activist groups, and even state governments, for what they viewed as sexually suggestive advertising campaigns and catalog photos.

 

Sometimes that kind of publicity can help a retailer more than it hurts, said retail analyst Jennifer Black with Wells Fargo Securities in Portland, Ore.

 

"In all honesty, I think the controversy (over sexually charged advertising) is kind of a marketing thing -- the teens love it," and they're crucial to Abercrombie's customer base, Black said.

 

But pushing controversial racial or ethnic depictions is different, said Black, who added that the best damage control might be "to come out with an immediate apology."

 

 

COMPANY TO DISCUSS RESPONSE

Carney said company executives would discuss a formal response today to the complaints they had received. He said he did not know how many of the T- shirts had been distributed or whether they had reached stores in all regions yet.

 

"They're part of a fashion line that moves in and out of stores," he said.

 

Abercrombie, a company that started with one small New York City outdoors store and factory in 1892, sold $1.36 billion worth of upscale clothing, accessories, shoes and related casual merchandise in the fiscal year that ended in February. The heavily mall-based retailer has headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.

[ValleyDwellerNorth]

OH YEAH ... and this one too! (lol - gag post)

 

http://www.generallyawesome.com/abercro.jpg

 

Abercrombie Offers ‘50% More Homoeroticism Free!’

 

New York, NY (AP) Last week Abercrombie & Fitch launched a new ad campaign just in time for the Holiday season. The new ad campaign hopes to appeal to consumers’ sense of value offering “50% more homoeroticism free!”

 

“We are just trying to deliver to customers more of what they want. The success of our previous homoerotic add campaigns,” said Abercrombie & Fitch PR spokesperson “shows that homoeroticism is very much in market demand.”

 

While it is too soon to measure the campaign’s effectiveness, early anecdotal evidence suggests that the campaign seems to be working. Randy Weingarten, who works at a gay rights watch-dog group, says at least four of his co-workers have recently purchased apparel from Abercrombie. He said “I think it is great that such a powerful mainstream retailer is making the public aware of the erotic possibilities of homosexuality.”

 

University sociologist John H. Crabtree said, “The fact is that many of the suburbanite youth who dress in Abercrombie’s clothing are dealing with issues of gay repression and societal expectations.”

 

In a candid interview, one Westchester County, NY youth answered Generally Awesome Dotcom’s questions about Abercrombie’s homoerotic marketing strategy. The youth, who is captain of his High School football team, asked that we not used his real name. To honor his request we gave him the assumed name ‘Gay Steve.’ Gay Steve said, “I wear Abercrombie because it’s comfortable. Their marketing strategy has no affect on me because I’m not gay. Really, I don’t know why you are coming at me with all this homo talk, because I am totally not gay.”

 

Abercrombie & Fitch corporate officers said that the impact of the ad campaign won’t be fully understood ‘til at least mid-January. But should the ad campaign prove successful it will silence critics on the Board of Directors who objected because it was “such a gay idea.”

 

The board member leading the opposition expressed concern, “We just get the feeling that one way or another we’re going to take it in the rear on this one.”

[woodlawn]

>Actually, I just checked several of the new pairs of shorts I

>recently got from A&F, and, they were all made in Sri Lanka.

>Guess the Chinese don't have a monopoly on child workers, nor

>A&F on finding where they are in good supply. :-)

 

China, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, Madagascar, whatever. Just about every major clothing label in the US uses the services of contract sewing plants in some Third World country where the absence of environmental laws and labor laws makes labor vastly cheaper than it is here. People in the fashion industry spend their time chasing the lowest possible labor cost from one end of the earth to the other. Believe it or not, I have seen sewing plants set up by Chinese companies in Kingston, Jamaica because they were able to pay the workers there even less than in China. The workers there spend all day operating sewing machines in a huge shed with no air conditioning, then go home to a neighborhood that looks as though it was just hit by a bomb. That's one reason it seems to me so silly to get upset about whether Abercrombie is hiring enough non-white models. The real problem with the industry has nothing to do with advertising campaigns.

 

I haven't been in an A&F store in quite a while because I can't bring myself to pay $100.00 for a pair of jeans that I happen to know costs less than $10.00 to make, including the cost of labor, materials and shipping (shipping of the finished goods from the sewing plant to the customer's warehouse). It's bad enough paying $30.00 for them at Old Navy, isn't it?

[bigguyinpasadena]

"If I stated my dislke of overweight gays in state capitols - would that make me a racist too? Naw, probably not, just discriminating"

WTF are you spewing on about?

If it is supposed to be a slam at me-well sorry but Pasadena is not a state capitol.So if that was what you were implying you kinda showed the whole board the I.Q level of racists who extol the virtues of racist employment practices.

If that is not what you meant-then please explain the meaning of your post.

[bootdad]

You SILLY, SILLY, SILLY, uptight PC little neurotic faggots - I love this board because of the polar extremes in opinion (SOOOOO - MUCH WHITE NOISE) on almost every issue - as usual the ones making the most irrelevant noise here - are the ones who have obviously never worked in a corporate setting / and probably never been accountable for any bottom line performance ! ! !

YES - I know many of you think marketing is not much of a business reality - but it is the reality that binds us as a culture and has defined our lives for almost half a century - Just ask ANDY W. ??? . . . / YADA YADA YADA / I won't go on - anyways as usual - let me clarify a few issues here -

late in 2003 - the great retail giant A+F was railroaded into announcing that it was canceling any further editions of the A+F 1/4rly - its magnificant phone book size and lavishly filled glorification of male hedonism which was loved by anyone who could still get it up and probably by many who wished they could. Six years later / 26 amazing / glorious issues later / the extraordinary quarterly provoked a steadily rising torrent of criticism from self-appointed moralists and advocacy groups. AND finally this past Christmas A+F sadly caved in - and suspended publication - let face it kids - we all loved it - the BOYS were GORGEOUS - can I repeat that - GORGEOUS - I was sitting in the Vancouver airport yesterday morning flying to New York as I watch 50 Japanese school girls de-plane and I counted 15 girls either wearing or carrying an A+F handbag - gee - I wonder - were they concerned about all those HOT white boys in the ads ??? - great advertising is about SEX - it has been for almost half a century - so where were we - what was this conversation all about anyway about ???

Hey OLD BOY in Pasadena - hate to break it to you sweetheart but you are not the fuckin Target Market - SO - SHUT your FOOD hole ! ! !

AND when the hell is the next issue of the quarterly being resurected because there are a million hungry fans still waiting ??? I mean they only printed 400,00 copies of each issue - GEE - do you think anyone really liked it ???

[Guest zipperzone]

WOW - now I know why they locked you up! You're lucky they didn't throw away the key.

[Guest zipperzone]

>"If I stated my dislke of overweight gays in state capitols -

>would that make me a racist too? Naw, probably not, just

>discriminating"

>WTF are you spewing on about?

>If it is supposed to be a slam at me-well sorry but Pasadena

>is not a state capitol.So if that was what you were implying

>you kinda showed the whole board the I.Q level of racists who

>extol the virtues of racist employment practices.

>If that is not what you meant-then please explain the meaning

>of your post.

 

Hey big guy - sorry - you're right, I'm wrong, about the state capitol thingy. All those California towns just meld into one in my tiny racist pea brain. Now that should make you happy.

 

Anywho - you got the jist of what I was saying, right?

 

Another poster said it so well - Don't get your panties in a twist. A&F ain't aiming their ads at you, and your chance of becoming their no. 1 sales rep anytime soon is non-existent

[bigguyinpasadena]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

WOW!less than 20 post and you are officially in the troll zone!Of course-you could be an old troll posting under a new handle.

Wonder where axeasshole is these days.

[bigguyinpasadena]

"Hey big guy - sorry - you're right, I'm wrong, about the state capitol thingy. All those California towns just meld into one in my tiny racist pea brain"

You said it well enough,we shall forever recall that you are a pea brain racist.

[bigguyinpasadena]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

So you are a racist and a self satisfied asshole,who assumes so much-yet knows soooooooooo little.

[VaHawk]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

>WOW!less than 20 post and you are officially in the troll

>zone!Of course-you could be an old troll posting under a new

>handle.

>Wonder where axeasshole is these days.

 

WOW! MORE THAN 800 POSTS! and you are still posting soupy dribbling shit like this! Must be difficult suffering from a 3 year plus case of diarrhea! :7

 

I just wonder WHAT was the point in you dredging up this TIRED OLD SUBJECT that was discusssed in detail in more than one post on the mc in the past. I assume, it was because you were bored and just wanted to stir up some shit so old that it is in the category of fossilized dinosaur shit. ;(

 

HOW FUCKING DREADFUL, that a company would DARE to aim their marketing campaigns towards their target audience, who purchase 90% of their product. I assume you are not one of the targets given both your age and your girth? Is that perhaps, just a tad, why you are so antagonistic towards A&F in general?

[Guest DevonSFescort]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

>WOW! MORE THAN 800 POSTS! and you are still posting soupy

>dribbling shit like this! Must be difficult suffering from a

>3 year plus case of diarrhea! :7

 

What's your excuse, Ms. 2200-plus posts?

 

>I just wonder WHAT was the point in you dredging up this TIRED

>OLD SUBJECT that was discusssed in detail in more than one

>post on the mc in the past. I assume, it was because you were

>bored and just wanted to stir up some shit so old that it is

>in the category of fossilized dinosaur shit. ;(

 

And sure enough, you took the bait and got stirred up.

 

>HOW FUCKING DREADFUL, that a company would DARE to aim their

>marketing campaigns towards their target audience, who

>purchase 90% of their product. I assume you are not one of the

>targets given both your age and your girth?

 

You assume wrongly. They make A&F clothes for people of considerable girth, and they'll gladly take money from trolls as old as you. BigGuy said exactly why he supports a boycott of A&F, and all you have to say in rebuttal is to change the subject to diarrhea and to fabricate statistics about their "target market." Thanks for your vitally important contribution to yet another conversation. If you're so TIRED of the subject, why bother participating in the thread?

[VaHawk]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

" If you're so TIRED of the subject, why bother participating in the thread? "

 

Since by all recent posts, you are so TIRED of the shit that life deals, then why do you bother to continue to participate in life?

 

So glad to see that your recent incarceration in a mental facility for the criminally insane and your pending trial on criminal charges hasn't stopped you from spouting your hateful, nasty bullshit here! Of course, that entails a BIG ASSUMPTION, on my part, that your "recent travails" are honest. I doubt it!

 

Let's surmise: you are an OLD, washed up looking, short dicked "escort", who treats his "customers" on a sliding scale according to their financial remuneration to you; you RESENT any other escort who has a client that praises him on this site when NO ONE who has EVER hired you is doing the same praising to you on this site; you have been hooking at $200/hr or more for more years than you want to admit, and NOW you are too OLD to hook it, and are finding yourself down and out, after blowing several thousands of dollars via hooking, and psyched out by the fact that there aren't many old farts out there who are going to PAY to be with your pyschotic, washed up, old ass! I'm sure after your recent "travails" that you will find it even more difficult.

 

Still living in that "fairy tale world" that you live in? You know the one: you wake up some day and you are a world reknowned artist and writer. If your art sucks even 1/2 as much as your writing skills, then you are in for one "long haul to disillusionment"!

[Guest DevonSFescort]

>What hurts a comapny like this the most? Ignoring them. They

>obviously aren't going to change their whitewash ways anytime

>soon, even with numerous discrimination lawsuits pending

>against them, so it's best to just let it go and shop

>elsewhere if you feel that strongly.

 

Better yet, order their catalogs, jack off to the photos, sleep with Abercrombie models and hot boys who wear Abercrombie, but don't actually buy their clothes yourself. Let A&F spend money wooing you, and enjoy the fruits of their cynical marketing without actually rewarding them for it. Takes the guilt right out of that guilty pleasure.

[Guest DevonSFescort]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

>Since by all recent posts, you are so TIRED of the shit that

>life deals, then why do you bother to continue to participate

>in life?

 

I'm not tired of the shit life deals at all. I'm having a blast. You must, as usual, be projecting your own misery onto others. Cheer up, Hawk. You'll find that Goodbar guy...someday.

[VaHawk]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

SOMEDAY? SHIT, now I'm disappointed! Aren't you the Mr. Goodbar that I seek?

[+ glutes]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

Well back to the A & F ad, I'd marry 'Michael Mantenuto' any day. What a gorgeous piece of work!

[woodlawn]

RE: Abercrombie and Fitch-will they NEVER learn?

 

>I'm not tired of the shit life deals at all. I'm having a

>blast. You must, as usual, be projecting your own misery onto

>others.

 

That's right, Hawkster. Are you really unaware that having your money, possessions and identity stolen, getting picked up by the cops while in a drug-induced manic state, getting incarcerated in a state mental institution and being bound over for trial on multiple criminal charges are among life's most joyous experiences? I can hardly wait for Devon's autobiography to come out -- no doubt it will be titled "Why Everyone Should Envy Me!"

 

Now that we've cleared that point up, I urge you to send Devon as much money as you possibly can. Just imagine the alternative -- he might actually have to get a job! The horror of that suggestion should be enough to send you running to the nearest Western Union office as fast as your little feet will carry you. Shouldn't it?

[Guy Fawkes]

Daddy Sez:

Gentlemen,

 

This is the second time in so many weeks that I've said: "Attack the Issues, Not the People". Last time, I said that I was considering forcing several of you to take a vacation.

 

The only reason that five of you are not taking a mandatory one week break right now, is that I went on a nice long cruise last night, slept on it overnight, and discussed it with Hooboy when I got up.

 

Next time, I'll do the knee-jerk reaction and You will spend time in the penalty box.