Ethical Case Of Abercrombie & Fitch

In an article from May of 2013 it was written that Abercrombie & Fitch refused to make clothes for larger women. Initially reading this article I was appalled at the lack of ethics Abercrombie & Fitch portrayed as a company. By not carrying XL or XXL sizes they ostracized anyone slightly overweight. In addition to only carrying the select small sizes, the company stated that they chose to be exclusive and they absolutely did not want overweight people shopping in their store. This causes the company to have a terrible reputation, as the plus-size market is extremely large. Abercrombie & Fitch gained a negative reputation from this because they did not make ethically right decisions. Ethical issues from this case would include fairness, independence, …show more content…
They advertise only to people they think are “good-looking” and in shape. Internal factors definitely have an influence on the company because this is the mindset of their CEO, Mike Jeffries. His influence trickles down throughout the company all the way to the “attractive-only” employees they hire. In order to change how the company is run and the choices they make they need to get down to the source, their CEO. Some external factors influence their poor ethical decision making as well because they want their store to stand out. Jeffries believes that offering larger sizes and including more sizes of people to shop in his store would make them boring. He stated, “Those companies that are in trouble are trying to target everybody: young, old, fat, skinny. But then you become totally vanilla.” Although Abercrombie & Fitch is one of a kind by only offering small sizes, they are still competing with similar stores and believe that by targeting only their niche market that it makes them stand out. While it does make them attract attention, a lot of the attention they receive is