Thursday, March 10, 2011

URBAN OUTFITTERS IS NOT URBAN!

It is less than urban (sub-urban) and is simply a shitty store in your local strip mall that sells shit to morons who want to appear "cultured". Just because it had roots as a second hand store doesn't make it "authentic". They sold out decades ago to extract money from its source; the wallets of suburban parents.

Some of their clothes are kind of funny, like when they mock Jews, Blacks or people with eating disorders, but the funniest aspect about Urban Outfitters is their hypocrisy. They are a publicly traded company whose shares are valued at over $30 (personally, I would invest in this $40 "art") and sell "I survived the Bush Administration" t-shirts. If by "surviving", they mean successfully expanding to every corner of the earth, than fuck yeah, they "survived" quite well. On January 1st, 2001 Urban Outfitters stock (URBN) was listed at $1.03. Thank god they were able to just barely eke out their meager existence over the next 8 years, reaching a high of $36 in 2008. The Bush years were just horrible to Urban Outfitters, their 5,000+ employees, 180 stores spread across 6 continents, $1.8 billion in revenue and $1.3 billion of assets.

To add to the hypocrisy, they sell $25 Che Guevara t-shirts yet restrict their workers from organizing. In 2009, the Sweden store fired all their workers for attempting to unionize so they would be eligible to collect overtime and insurance. That is so cultured and deck, they might as well buy a few Guatemalan families on the black market and chain them up inside overnight Walmart style. At least Walmart is honest about their low income clientele and keeping costs down, and doesn't try to sell fake "vintage" homeless people clothing that you could purchase at Salvation Army for 1/10th the price. But then again, Salvation Army doesn't have shareholders to report to.

Anyone who shops at Urban Outfitters should fucking die.

3 comments:

  1. shouldn't we be supporting companies (morally not monetarily) that soul business model is to overcharge hipster wannabe's?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous- Anyone can make money overcharging douchebags, I give their shareholders credit for raking in the bucks at the expense of Hipsters. However, that does not make it right. Just because I could become a billionaire selling exploding ninja stars to schoolchildren, doesn't mean I should. We all have a moral and social responsibility to the rest of society and I will not stand by silently and let the douchebaggery continue unquestioned.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Well stated, Laura Chennel !

    ReplyDelete