You’re Too Fat to Wear Our Clothes

Abercrombie & Fitch models are used as a tool to appear “cool” to target markets.

Business ethics is a fundamental segment in ensuring business sustainability. It applies to every aspect of a business organization, because it influences its workers and ultimately, the culture. The public is becoming more aware of business and their ethical behaviours, and businesses are concerned with creating shared value.

Abercrombie & Fitch has completely ruined this notion of business ethics, when its CEO Mike Jeffries said “It’s almost everything. That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people. We don’t market to anyone other than that,”. This has caused a huge stir and controversy among consumers and potential consumers. It is well known that Abercrombie & Fitch does not carry sizes bigger than L for women’s, because of their horrendous value proposition. This sends a public message that teenage girls need to be a specific shape/size in order to be “cool” and “popular”.

This has caused A&F shares to drop 10.4% to $34.55 on November 6, 2013. After much backlash from customers online and even a petition from Change.org with over 77,000 signatures, Abercrombie & Fitch is finally releasing plus sized apparel for the audience. The lack of morals from the CEO has caused the all-American clothing company to suffer from decreased sales as customers begin to boycott the clothing brand. This shows that consumers these days are becoming more aware of the ‘message’/value proposition offered by companies.

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