Is This the End of the ‘Progressive’ Brand?

Consumers living in the time of the coronavirus appear to have very little patience for brands that even attempt to benefit from the pandemic or take it as an opportunity to sidestep “brand values” they once held up for all to see. Cancel culture was in full swing before the pandemic upended daily life and vaporized a decade of job growth in the U.S., but such momentous upheaval has led to a number of brands — ones that normally promote an aura of being a general corporate “do gooder” — of accidentally and avoidably courting public fury while trying to manage the effects on their businesses. The clearest example may be Everlane and the blowback received after it unceremoniously fired just under 300 workers, nearly its entire retail and back-end workforce. A few of the severed workers took to Twitter claiming they were only a week before assured nothing of the sort would happen and a group of tech workers said everyone who was part of a relatively new union effort was fired. People and customers of the brand filled social media with comments vowing to boycott Everlane. Even Sen. Bernie Sanders took Everlane to task for its actions, calling the brand

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