I think it's important as consumers to not only know what we are buying but who we are buying from. This concept has been very overlooked. We buy a product because we want it and (if we're thrifty), it's on sale. But what if a company's values directly contradict your own? What if you discover the owner of your favorite store is a bigot who only sells clothes to the "cool people in school" or who don't want customers to see people who aren’t as hot as them wearing their clothing.
*cough* Abercrombie and Fitch *cough*
“That’s why we hire good-looking people in our stores. Because good-looking people attract other good-looking people, and we want to market to cool, good-looking people."
“Abercrombie is only interested in people with washboard abs who look like they’re about to jump on a surfboard”
CEO of Abercrombie and Fitch everybody.
If these comments don't bother you, that's totally okay. Not everyone will take this to heart. But for those of you who aren't fond of these comments, whose stomachs just got uneasy and it's not from your extra high rise skin tight A&F jeggings, this is for you.
Every company is going to have its own ideas, don't get me wrong. Some brands will have an opinion about gay marriage or abortion or religion you may disagree with. But opinions are different than morals. You can go to Chickfila as a gay man or woman because they aren't going to discriminate you. Abercrombie, however, is a different story. Here is a statement from a previous employee at A&F:
Employees — referred to hilariously as ‘models’ — were sorted by appearance into various parts of the store. The thinner and more conventionally good-looking you were, the closer you were to the front. Ethnic minorities and overweight people most of the time went to work in the stock room, along with anyone who wasn’t tall or facially symmetrical enough to fold t-shirts (Chelsea Fagan, thought catalog).
A company's morals aren't the only thing you should look into before buying a brand. See who the money goes to as well. For instance Kylie Jenner has a lip kit out as well as Huda Beauty. Both products are of equal quality and have very similar shades (according to the dozens of YouTube reviews I watched). Now Kylie Jenner's brand is more popular and if you didn't know Huda's backstory then you would most likely go purchase the Kylie lip kit. Huda is a self made entrepreneur. She entered college as a finance major and found her beauty outlet there by sharing makeup tips with her friends. She eventually began creating beauty related YouTube videos and blogging about her love for makeup. She quit her finance job to pursue her passion and entered a service job which she states the following:
"it's just very unacceptable in Middle Eastern culture to have service jobs. My parents were like, "Just do it for fun. You have this respectable job in a company".
Going with her gut, she continued to work in the beauty industry and now she's an entrepreneur of her own makeup line. Kylie Jenner is Kylie Jenner and that's all she had to do. Now I don't know about you but if I was looking for a lipstick, I'd want my money to go to Huda, the woman who started her company ground up versus Kylie, (what does she even do guys??)
Your money shouldn't just go to a product you love. It should go to a company you respect.
