“Teen retailer Abercrombie & Fitch doesn’t stock XL or XXL sizes in women’s clothing because they don’t want overweight women wearing their brand. They want the ‘cool kids,’ and they don’t consider plus-sized women as being a part of that group.” http://www.businessinsider.com/abercrombie-wants-thin-customers-2013-5#ixzz2edy6UnwH
This is just one of the many controversial statements from A&F regarding beauty and objectification, of both men and women, which has received a lot of media attention. They publicly state that they only want attractive, popular and thin people to wear their clothes. Then one can ask if having such a specific consumer base is discriminatory and an example of poor business ethic (and if one first has one example, who knows what other poor ethics they hide?), or is it simply their way of marketing them selves?
In my opinion, the fact that the CEO (Mike Jeffries) of such a large and publicly known company states such things publicly shows lack of respect and humility, not necessarily a poor business ethic in it self. It is their way of marketing them selves, and they are completely open about it, however it gets worse:
According to this news article http://elitedaily.com/news/world/abercrombie-says-it-would-rather-burn-clothes-than-give-them-to-poor-people/ they burn damaged clothing instead of giving it away to the less fortunate (like other companies do to help their “social responsibility”) – this is directly poor business ethics in my opinion.