Dive Brief:
- Barneys CEO Mark Lee met with the civil rights activist Al Sharption as planned in New York on Tuesday, as the company faces accusations of racial profiling and an investigation by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office.
- Sharpton called their discussion a "candid and open meeting," while Lee state that he does not want his stores to engage in racial discrimination and hopes "to be part of the solution" in confronting such problems.
- Lee maintains that Barneys employees were not at fault in two cases where customers have accused the retailer of detaining them under inappropriate circumstances.
Dive Insight:
Barneys recently implemented a new loss prevention strategy, The New York Times reports. Security personnel were urged to take more chances, and police interactions went up, the move also preceded complaints from shoppers who believed that they had been unfairly singled out for being black.
As Lee and Sharpton acknowledged, they're just now at the very beginning of a long dialog on this issue. Barneys will have a chance to respond to some worrisome allegations here, but making a public case that the company did nothing wrong or (at the very least) is committed to concrete improvements may not be easy.
