14 DAY TRIAL // Target caused serious waves online by offering a dress for plus-size women in “Manatee Gray” while the other option, for slimmer women, was in “Dark Heather Gray.” The company has since apologized for the mishap.
The offending label was spotted by Susan Clemens, who posted a photo of it on her Twitter account. You can see it attached to this article.
“What the. Plus sized women get ‘Manatee Grey’ while standard sizes are ‘Dark Heather Grey.’ @Target #notbuyingit,” she wrote in a post accompanying the photo.
The implications of the label were obvious so it’s no wonder thousands took to online forums to vent and even threaten Target with a boycott.
That a rep for the company immediately responded to Susan’s tweet seemed to matter very little.
“Hey Susan – I'm sharing your comments with the appropriate team and they will review them as soon as possible. Thanks!,” Bryan of Ask Target said on the same social networking site.
In a statement to Forbes, Target spokesperson Joshua Thomas points out that Manatee Gray really is a color and that it was just a coincidence that it was used in relation to a plus-size item.
To illustrate his point, he even offers a link to other products in the same color, including household items.
“In this case, he says, there were two different teams of buyers responsible for the ‘missy’ and plus-size product lines, and the teams didn’t coordinate when they inputted the product information for the site. One team apparently used the color’s official name, while the other eyeballed it,” Forbes writes.
Either way, Target is sorry if anyone was upset by their mistake – because that’s what this was, an honest mistake.
“We apologize for any discomfort this might have caused and are working to update the name of the dress to reflect Dark Heather Gray. This was an unfortunate oversight and we’ll take it into consideration moving forward,” Thomas says.