Walmart Joins Target In Pulling Welspun’s Egyptian Sheets From Shelves
Walmart has decided to join Target in pulling Welspun’s line of premium Egyptian cotton bed sheets from the shelves after the supplier of the sheets was unable to prove to either retailer that the sheets were the real deal and not cheap knock-offs.
According to Bloomberg, it was roughly a month ago that Target announced they would be pulling Welspun’s line of premium Egyptian cotton bed sheets from their shelves and giving customers who purchased the sheets a refund. Walmart has recently made the decision to join Target in both pulling the product and offering the refunds.
A spokesperson from Walmart claims the customers of the retailer trust the company to provide products as promised by the labels printed on them. When Welspun, the manufacturer of the bed sheets, was unable to assure Walmart – or Target – that the sheets were actually 100 percent Egyptian content, as described by the label, both companies made the decision to pull the products and offer the refund.
“Welspun has not been able to assure us the products are 100 percent Egyptian cotton, which is unacceptable. While the sheets are excellent quality, we are offering our customers a full refund.”
Any Walmart customer who would like a refund can bring their bed sheets back to any Walmart location and receive a refund. Walmart has also pulled all of the unsold Welspun products from the shelves with the intention of giving them to Good360. Good360 is an organization that donates all companies’ extra merchandise to a number of different charities.
Business Insider reports that Bed Bath & Beyond and J.C. Penny are also looking into how credible the Welspun Egyptian cotton products on their shelves currently are. Business Insider goes on to speculate that the latest Welspun scandal involving Egyptian cotton bed sheets only supports the theory that a very large percentage of the 100 percent Egyptian cotton products sold in the United States are actually cheap knock offs.
While, technically, high-quality cotton can be grown in just about any part of the world – the cotton has to be grown in Egypt in order for it to be considered 100 percent Egyptian cotton. Cotton grown anywhere else in the world is not authentic, regardless of how great the quality may or may not be.
“When you think about it, 1 percent of the world’s crops are Egyptian cotton. You walk into any store, or look at any one of these websites and see they’re all selling Egyptian cotton — it just doesn’t add up,” Scott Tannen, founder of luxury bedding startup Boll and Branch said. He went on to say he believes the case Target and Walmart have against Welspun for not selling authentic products is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the bed sheet industry.
While there is certainly no question that Tannen is interested in exposing all of the fake Egyptian cotton manufacturers, he is certainly not the only one who is suspicious of this particular industry. In fact, the Cotton Egypt Association conducted a study on Egyptian cotton sold by retailers in the United States. Using a DNA-based authentication program, the study determined 90 percent of the products did not contain any cotton produced in Egypt at all. At the time, this was an association that had supported Welspun as a symbol of success in the Egypt cotton industry. Naturally, this is something that has been called into question given the current situation with Target, Walmart, and a number of other industries.
#EgyptianCotton Are we to believe that someone at $TGT $JCP $WMT wasn't aware all along? #Wellspun https://t.co/FThh8bbu9f
— David D. Tawil (@DavidDTawil) August 25, 2016
Do you think it is fair that – right now – the only stipulation is that the retailers are giving refunds and pulling the products off the shelves? Should Welspun be held responsible in some way for attempting to trick customers into purchasing sheets that were not really 100 percent Egyptian cotton?
[Image via ShutterStock]
