News

Retailers lower the boom on Confederate merchandise online and offline

There is a bit of a civil war brewing in the retail sector over the push to pull Confederate Army products off shelves in light of a movement to retire the Confederate flag and Confederate military items to the history books.

June 24, 2015

There is a bit of a civil war brewing in the retail sector over the push to pull Confederate Army products off shelves in light of a movement to retire the Confederate flag and Confederate military symbol to the history books.

Big name retailers online and in the brick-and-mortar space, including Sears, Amazon and Target are swearing allegiance to a halt of Confederate merchandise, according to a New York Post report.

“This decision is consistent with our longstanding policy that prohibits items that promote or glorify hatred, violence and racial intolerance,” eBay spokeswoman Johnna Hoff told the Post, describing the flag as a “contemporary symbol of divisiveness and racism.”

The retail battle against Confederate items and anything remotely Confederate related includes replicas of a toy car that boasts the Confederate flag.

Yet, as is often the case with a retail movement such as this comes the birth of a new business opportunity—black market selling of Confederate-related items. The Postreports flag sales spiked nearly 9,000 percent before Amazon declared it would stop selling Confederate flags.

The war over whether the Confederate flag should remain a symbol for southern states, and as a décor and symbol on products promises to wage on and likely get more heated before the debate quiets as legislators in South Carolina move forward to remove the flag from state-house grounds. That move was prompted by the church murders in Charleston, South Carolina. Yet some residents and businesses don't see a need to obliviate Confederate symbol-related merchandise from store shelves or the retirement of the Confederate flags from state legislative buildings.

Etailer Amazon was selling 29,000 Confederate-related items, according to a New York Times report, ranging from tongue rings to shower curtains.