The sales staff at the Hollister store located in the Westfield Valley Fair Mall in San Jose has been known to be rude to Asian shoppers.
According to a recent report in the World Journal, an ethnic newspaper, the store manager said to a Chinese couple that "We don't sell to people like you."
A team of local Chinese American activists could not believe this could be happening in Silicon Valley and went to the store to investigate. They overheard another salesman refusing to accept an Asian woman's check for merchandise she picked out. He gave "brand protection" as the reason for no sale.
Hollister stores are wholly owned subsidiary of Abercrombie & Fitch. The parent firm earned national notoriety a few years back for offering racist tee shirts depicting stereotypic images of Asians, before withdrawing them from sale in face of a storm of public opinion.
The Hollister website features buffed images of young male and female, black and white models called "dudes" and "bettys". Apparently Asians are not regarded as dudes and bettys, so why would any Asian want to shop there?
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