NaCo, Macy’s and the Backlash
NaCo is very cool. How do I know? Because of the two sure-fire 100% guaranteed leading indicators of coolness.
1. Our interns love their stuff.
2. I had never heard of it, and the interns had to explain to me what it was.
Both as reliable indicators of coolness as the sun coming up in the morning.
But apparently somebody doesn’t think they’re all that cool. As reported on AdAge.com today, recently some Macy’s stores in Texas and Georgia started stocking some of NaCo’s t-shirts:
Macy’s, however, quickly found that not everyone is amused by NaCo’s sense of humor. Its T-shirt with the fashion-parody slogan “Brown is the new white” drew immediate fire from a conservative anti-immigration website, generating e-mails to Macy’s threatening a boycott and online rants about racism and immigrants trying to take over America (one poster pointed out a possible link between Macys’ red-star logo and communism). Fox News did a story, and Macy’s pulled the “Brown is the new white” shirt.”
Dean Schwartz, president-CEO of Naco USA, is unperturbed and said, “Macys has taken it in stride.”
Good for NaCo and good for Macy’s. If you’re going to be different and cool; if you’re going to try to change things, then you’re going to catch some heat. There is always someone invested in the status quo, or what they think is the status quo. So despite the fact that America has been a melting pot since its beginning, some people are angry about what they see as the Latin-ization of the US. The people who threatened to boycott Macy’s are of the same vein as the ones who phoned in death threats to Pizza Patron.
Angry conservative bloggers and anti-immigrant boycotts won’t stop the emergence of the Hispanic market in the US, but it will continue to be one of the challenges faced by companies who serve and market to Hispanics.