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Sportswear maker Lululemon has apologized after one of its employees posted a t-shirt design on social media that caused outrage in China.
The firm said the design, seen as a racist reference to the coronavirus, was not one of its products and that the employee had been fired.
The design, which represented a take-out box of “bat fried rice,” had sparked calls for a boycott of the brand.
Bogus claims that the virus spread because people who ate bats swept the net.
Lululemon said the design was “inappropriate and inexcusable.”
‘Insults China’
The dispute started on Sunday when one of the Canadian firm’s art directors, Trevor Fleming, posted a photo of the design on Instagram, which is not available in China.
However, the image, created by a California-based artist, made it to the Chinese social media platform Weibo, where it generated the hashtag “Lululemon insults China” and garnered hundreds of millions of views.
People also expressed anger on Twitter using the hashtag #BoycottLululemon.
“We act immediately and the person involved is no longer an employee of Lululemon,” the firm said on Instagram, without naming the employee responsible for the design.
In a statement to Reuters news agency, Mr. Fleming said: “It is something I deeply regret, and my eyes have been opened to the profound domino effect this error has had.”
The coronavirus was first identified last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan. It is believed to have originated in bats, with other wild animals, possibly pangolins, that play a role in transmission to humans.
Lululemon has caused controversy in the past. In 2004, founder Chip Wilson, who no longer runs the company, scoffed at the Japanese pronunciation of the company name.
And in 2013, he said some women’s bodies were not suitable for the brand’s clothing, leading to accusations of “fat embarrassment.”
