Tag Archives: retail

Esquire reports that many of the nation’s retailers of men’s pants are lying about their waist sizes in order to make you feel thinner. It’s called “vanity waist-sizing.”

Target currently does not have a location in San Francisco, but it wants one, which is perhaps why it has offered to provide services to the trauma unit at San Francisco General. But to get that contract, the city would have to waive its long-standing requirement that all companies involved in city business offer the same benefits to LGBT employees …

The Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side’s Lincoln Square, longtime host to appearances by famous authors and classical music stars, will be replaced next fall by famed downtown discounter Century 21. The bookseller announced last week that it could no longer afford the area’s sky-high rent and will close in January. So no more meet-n-greets with opera stars, …

While the Human Rights Campaign has come out uncharacteristically forcefully against Target, the company continues to enjoy a 100% rating on HRC’s lauded Corporate Equality Index. Yesterday HRC’s Fred Sainz told Michelangelo Signorile that it’s just too complicated to change the Index right now. Signorile: Sainz went onto again explain how complicated it supposedly is to change the Corporate Equality …

American Apparel’s stock value is plummeting upon news earlier this week that the company may be forced into bankruptcy over its vanishing credit line with vendors. After warning this week that there was “substantial doubt that the company will be able to continue as a going concern,” the company saw its stock fall 21.3% on Wednesday, ending at an all-time …

MoveOn.org has launched a television campaign against Target. The campaign begins tomorrow on three networks in Minnesota and will air nationally on MSNBC.

After bedbug infestations closed Manhattan outposts for Hollister, Abercrombie, and Victoria’s Secret, Fifth Avenue’s fancy-schmancy Bergdorf Goodman isn’t taking any chances. The Fifth Ave. shopping mecca is the first high-end retailer to acknowledge it’s worried about the city’s bedbug infestation – and has even hired an insect-sniffing beagle to root any out. Swanky Bergdorf Goodman staffers, though, openly say they …

And somebody really doesn’t like that bit of news. CNN ran this every five minutes last night. No audio. (Clip via Towleroad)

Abe Sauer writes at The Awl: The truth is not that Target and its leadership have suddenly turned on their commitment to gay rights. It’s more that it never really existed to begin with. Further research shows that Target has funneled significant funding to the most socially conservative of Republicans and that it boasts a frightening culture of anti-gay candidate …

And since the GOP filibustered the Disclose Act last week, we may often never know which corporations are behind these kinds of campaigns. (Tipped by JMG reader Alan)

Via Towleroad, here’s a Minnesota mother of a gay son making what she says is her final shopping trip to her local Target “until they make this right.” It’s a lovely video.

Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel has sent a letter to all employees defending the company’s track record on LGBT issues. This comes after the revelation that the retail giant had donated $150K to a Minnesota group that funds the campaign of a candidate with ties to an anti-gay Christian rock band. The band and its leader openly call for the executions …

Over at SFist, Matt Baume makes a stunning discovery. Bradlee Dean, the frontman of a Christian rock band in Minnesota called You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, recently said that Muslim countries that execute LGBTs are “more moral than even the American Christians,” plus some mouth-foaming about gays engaging in abominations and child molestation. Ugh. So what’s the Target …

As I walked by with Strong Enough blasting at 120 decibels, I’m quite certain the clerk was signaling for me to kill her. All Cher, all day, every day? No jury would convict. At Caesar’s Palace, of course.

Wal-Mart has spent over $2M in attorney and court fees fighting a measly $7000 fine for that infamous Thanksgiving Day trampling case in which somebody was killed in a sales-frenzy stampede. The company is concerned that once OSHA starts successfully fining them, then they’ll really have to play by the rules. In fighting the federal fine, Wal-Mart is arguing that …

One day after their Soho flagship Hollister store was shut down due to a massive infestation of bedbugs, today Abercrombie & Fitch has closed their South Street Seaport location for the same reason. Gothamist again has the story. According to an Abercrombie & Fitch spokesperson, the store was closed to “deal with a similar problem” as Hollister’s, i.e. the parasite …

New York City’s neverending battle with bedbugs has gone retail. Via Gothamist: Hollister, the teen-oriented clothing store that’s a subsidiary of Abercrombie & Fitch, was shut down yesterday due to what one employee described as “a massive bedbug outbreak” at the four-story SoHo flagship location. And according to our source, who spoke on condition of anonymity so that he/she wouldn’t …

As G20 Summit rioters nearby were smashing storefronts and burning police cars, on Sunday Toronto’s landmark Eaton Center Mall quickly locked their doors, trapping at least a few patrons inside. But this guy wanted IN, he wanted to SHOP, bitches. This clip has already gone viral, so expect an auto-tuned remix any minute. (Via – Durban Bud)

Yesterday Gawker dug up an internal memo from American Apparel directing managers to send in photos of potential new employees so that anybody not up to their model-pretty standards could be immediately weeded out. One former manager tells Gawker about the kind of black girls she was instructed to hire: “None of the trashy kind that come in, we don’t …

After years of being blocked from a NYC location due to vigorous opposition by labor unions, Wal-Mart may have finally found a location in Brooklyn that the city cannot fight. The site, which is currently vacant, meets many of the parameters of what Walmart is looking for in a New York City location: an as-of-right location in an outer borough, …