Previously, Boycott Watch
reported that
Wal-Mart was offering t-shirts with the Nazi Death's Head logo, and how
Wal-Mart failed to remove the shirts from their stores weeks after discovering
the problem. In our report, we wrote how Wal-Mart refused to answer our
questions about the origin of the shirts and how they ended up on company
shelves in the first place. Despite Wal-Mart's refusal to comment, Boycott
Watch has some of the answers, thanks in part to columnist Debbie Schlussel
(http://www.debbieschlussel.com) who broke the story that Wal-Mart failed to
remove the shirts after more than three weeks of being aware of the problem.
United Press International reports that shirts were
made by Miami-based Orange Clothing Company and its owner Scott Deutsch, who is
Jewish and took the image from a "trends" book. Deutsch obviously failed to do
his homework and know exactly what he was putting on the shirts he sold to
Wal-Mart, including a failure to discover if the image was perhaps under a
copyright. The story and blame, however, does not stop there.
"It is pure sloppy business to just copy an image and
blindly use it" said Boycott Watch President Fred Taub. "This is not just a
case of making one design based on another - some would call this artistic
plagiarism. Moreover, Wal-Mart is handling this entire incident very poorly.
That is simply bad public relations." Taub referred to Wal-Mart's refusal to
answer questions about the case after it failed to remove the shirts from its
stores when it was completely aware of the logo origin. Taub also stated
Wal-Mart will likely be hurt financially as indicated by volume of emails
received on the topic as well as the lack of any apology by Wal-Mart. Taub
continued "Wal-Mart is acting like an 800 pound gorilla - they think they can
do whatever they want because of their size but they forget who brings in the
bananas."
UPI further reported that Orange Clothing
Company stands to loose $200,000 on the Nazi logo shirts on $10Million of
annual sales. By our calculations, Orange Clothing probably works on a
high-volume/low-margin model, perhaps a 5-7% margin, so this 2% loss is
significant but won't cause the company to fail. The important question,
however, is how will Scott Deutsch assure his customers this will not happen
again?
While Wal-Mart received a black-eye in this
case, the company hurt itself by not responding properly. Wal-Mart did not take
complete and decisive actions to remove the shirts and the corporate statement
was less than endearing. Once again, Wal-Mart could have prevented the problem
they now face but failed to avoid problems.
More
significantly for Scott Deutsch, companies purchasing logo items from Orange
Clothing Company and other similar sources need to make sure the printed images
being sold in their stores are in fact safe for retail, meaning not under
copyright or other moral distribution restriction, such as the Nazi logo. Scott
Deutsch will have to take action to make sure he does not adversely affect his
customers in the future, and his customers would be wise to ask tough question
about the products he and other suppliers are sending.
Considering its recent alliance with groups promoting
gay marriage (here and
here) and the
way it handled their Nazi t-shirt debacle, Wal-Mart appears to want to hurt
itself with bad public relations and to alienate their customers. Perhaps they
are now M-PC, or Masochistically Politically Correct, to coin a phrase. |
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