Lululemon, the Canadian apparel company, has apologised for an “inappropriate and inexcusable” social media post by an employee that caused an uproar in China and threatened to disrupt its rapidly expanding operations in the world’s second-largest economy.
The hashtag “Lululemon insults China” garnered hundreds of millions of views on Weibo, the country’s domestic alternative to Twitter, and some users called for a boycott after the brand’s artistic director posted a picture of a T-shirt saying “no thank you” to a takeaway box of “bat fried rice”.
The design was widely viewed by Chinese internet users as a racist reference to the origins of the global coronavirus pandemic in the city of Wuhan, capital of Hubei province.
In statements posted on Instagram and Weibo the company said the “offensive” T-shirt, which was designed and marketed by a California-based artist, “is not a Lululemon product”. It added that the artistic director who reposted a picture of it on his Instagram account, Trevor Fleming, “is no longer an employee”.
Mr Fleming was not immediately available for comment. In a statement to Reuters, he said he “deeply regretted” reposting a picture of the T-shirt.
Multinational companies are no stranger to such controversy in China. Italian luxury brand Dolce & Gabbana drew accusations of racism in 2018 over an advertising campaign showing a Chinese model trying to eat an oversized cannolo with chopsticks.
Last month the US and China sparred bitterly over President Donald Trump’s repeated references to “the Chinese virus”, which Beijing officials said was an attempt to “stigmatise” China. The reference was also controversial in the US, where the president’s critics said it was intended to deflect attention from his administration’s handling of the pandemic and had inspired hate crimes against Asian Americans.
While Mr Trump has stopped using the phrase, senior officials in the US, Europe and Australia are stepping up pressure on Chinese president Xi Jinping’s administration to explain the origins of the coronavirus and China’s initial handling of the outbreak.
As with the 2003 Sars outbreak that originated in southern China, the coronavirus is believed to have originated in bats before possibly jumping to humans through an intermediary host such as pangolins. Last month Republican US senator Ted Cruz of Texas attacked critics who blame Mr Trump for the severity of the pandemic in the US, which has the world’s largest number of infections and deaths, saying the president wasn’t the one “serving bat soup in the Wuhan province [sic]”.
China is one of Lululemon’s most important markets. According to the company’s 2019 annual report, China was its fourth largest market in terms of outlets. It now has more than 38 stores across the country, including Hong Kong.
Like most other retailers, Lululemon closed its China outlets when the coronavirus epidemic was peaking there in February and March.
But in the company’s last earnings call, on March 26, chief executive Calvin McDonald said he was anticipating a quick rebound in Lululemon’s China operations. “We will double our store base in China this year and we believe we are only scratching the surface of our potential within China,” he added.
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2020-04-22 09:08:28Z
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