30th Apr 2002

‘We Didn’t Do Any Test

‘We Didn’t Do Any Test Marketing.’
Wow. Abercrombie & Fitch really stuck their foot in it. It took hundreds of letters of outrage and more than a hundred protesters at their San Francisco store for the catalog retailer to realize that a series of T-shirts they came out with featuring 1920s-era Asian stereotypes might be offensive to some people. Among the several designs were one featuring grinning cartoon characters of two Chinese brothers wearing coolie hats and the text “Wong Brother Laundry Service…Two Wongs Can Make It White” and “Abercrombie & Fitch Crazy Kung-Fu Clinic — Wise Man Say, ‘We Smash You Face’.” A DM News story (not online) quotes a spokesperson as saying “We were suprised by the reaction…We didn’t do any test marketing.” No duh. But they really thought they’d have to test market that? I just wonder who thought this was funny in the first place. Here is an MSNBC article.


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