In typical “this could come back to bite you” fashion, Abercrombie & Fitch ($ANF) and CEO Mike Jeffries are in PR hot water thanks to a comment that he made in 2006.
“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. A lot of people don’t belong (in our clothes), and they can’t belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely.”
He adds…
“Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla. You don’t alienate anybody, but you don’t excite anybody, either.”
So here we have a brand where cargos go to die… with an elitist, out-of-touch CEO telling a huge percentage of american consumers “we don’t want your business”. Can’t blame a guy for telling it as he sees it… but at what cost to ANF?
Check out last week’s interview I had with Bloomberg Radio’s Hays Advantage.
Botox MAY have been brought up.