Dive Brief:

• Nordstrom became the latest retailer getting attention for an attempt to be cheeky that offended many people and is pulling a Hannukah sweater after protests on social media.

• The sweater read “Chai Maintenance,” where "chai," the Hebrew word for “life,” and sounds like "high" in English. It also includes the acronym JAP, which refers to “Jewish American Princess.”

• People expressed disappointment in the department store for selling an item perpetuating stereotypes of Jewish people and Jewish women in particular.

Dive Insight:

The cluelessness of retailers when it comes to designing, merchandising, and selling items that one Tweeter called "exploring the outer reaches of bad taste” can be hard to fathom. 

Many wonder how such designs get past what must be a series of decision-making steps. Some speculate that the attention, even when its negative, is part of the point. 

But any retailer like Nordstrom that is trying to sell clothing to a wide range of people should learn that attempts to be edgy or humorous are not really in its wheelhouse. The sweater was designed and made by Faux Real, which specializes in novelty shirts for a decidedly niche clientele.

The department store told Fortune magazine that it wasn’t paying attention when it decided to sell the sweater and apologized. Target, by contrast, is refusing to pull a sweater alluding to obsessive compulsive disorder. And Bloomingdale’s is stuck with an ad in its catalog that to many seems to encourage date rape.

“We made a mistake by not looking more closely at the words on the sweater before we posted it – had we done so, we wouldn’t have offered it,” a Nordstrom spokesperson told Fortune. 

“As soon as we heard from customers, we removed it from our site right away. We’re terribly sorry for offending people and sincerely apologize.”