Abercrombie & Fitch is well-known as an American clothing retail company that targets mainly at young people. I believe many of us know this company or have shopped in their stores.

Recently, A&F has come into the spotlight because of a person called Robin Lewis. She has published a book called “The New Rules of Retails”, and in her interview with Business Insider, she brought up the issue of A&F not selling clothes to larger women.

People then went back to look at the interview of A&F’s CEO Mike Jeffries 7 years ago, in which he said: “in every school there are the cool and popular kids, and then there are the not-so-cool kids. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends.” This is probably why A&F doesn’t carry sizes larger than 10 for women, the CEO simply doesn’t want any fat people to wear their clothes.

From my perspective, this is an unethical marketing behaviour. Being one of A&F’s marketing strategies, it may not be illegal to target only at the skinny and fit young people. However, ethical issue is something on a higher level that a larger company like A&F has to consider. By excluding over weight and unpopular people from consuming their clothes, it actually violates the human rights of those people and creates inequality in the society. While H&M, American Eagle, A&F’s major competitors, both offering large size clothes, the way A&F behave would damage it’s reputation and put them in disadvantage in the competition, therefore losing its current and potential customers.

Reference:

http://www.salon.com/2006/01/24/jeffries/

http://www.businessinsider.com/abercrombie-wants-thin-customers-2013-5