Luxury design house Coach has promised to stop destroying damaged bags after a TikTok video went viral exposing the company for slashing and disposing of returned items.
Whilst this is not a new practise in the luxury fashion industry, Coach’s website boasts about its repair services and how sustainable it is. These contradictions provoked outrage from social media users.
Posting below the video, one user accused Coach of ‘greenwashing’ – which is the practice of using green marketing to make customers believe the company cares about the environment more than it really does. This boosts profit because younger consumers particularly tend to be more conscious of sustainability issues, and opt for brands that appear to hold the same values.
Another poster wanted companies fined for this. They also accused Coach of creating ‘scarcity for profit’. This relates to projecting the idea that an item is in short supply so as to give the brand an air of exclusivity, which drives sales because people want to own something that is seen as difficult to get your hands on, unless you have the means.
People were not just outraged by the destruction of goods. They were also unimpressed by Coach’s reaction to the criticism. The brand’s Instagram account posted a four-slide response in which they stated their commitment to sustainability; announced they would no longer be destroying goods; and boasted about how charitable they were. But most people were not convinced. One poster suggested that Coach were only doing something because they had been ‘caught’.
The charitable efforts did not sit right with people either, one poster accusing them of taking a ‘convenient’ opportunity to praise themselves.
But, if the company is producing so much surplus that they can donate 55 million dollars’ worth of goods, maybe the main issue lies in their over-production, which doesn’t sound particularly sustainable either.