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New Era Cap Co. recently recalled 100 of its hats from a Cleveland store after the company was alerted it was designing caps with logos representing local gangs.
According to The Buffalo News, New Era, which designs caps for various sports franchises, pulled the hats from the shelves of a Finish Line store in Cleveland on Saturday (June 9).
Peace in the Hood, an organization for gang prevention and intervention, reportedly discovered the hats and notified the retailer who in turn informed New Era.
"We first received reports of the hats from our outreach workers, two of them being former gang members," explained El-hajj Khalid A. Samad, executive director of Peace in the Hood. "We got together with several other groups and talked about a way to proactively address the situation."
The logos on the hats represented gangs from "Da Valley" (Garden Valley housing project), "10-5," for the 105th Street gang called Waste-5 and "HVD" for the street gang on Harvard Avenue.
"We had no knowledge the logo on our cap was a gang logo," said Gerry Matos, senior vice president of marketing for New Era Cap Co. "Once we were alerted, we immediately contacted the retailer and had the caps recalled."
Mato revealed that the company plans to take steps to ensure that it never happens again.
"We plan to work with police gang suppression units to get the names of gangs across the U.S.," Mato said. " We also have told our sales force to ask 'why' if a logo is obscure."
The recalled hats were shipped back to New Era Cap Co. and will be destroyed along with their logo designs.
Source: sohh.com
According to The Buffalo News, New Era, which designs caps for various sports franchises, pulled the hats from the shelves of a Finish Line store in Cleveland on Saturday (June 9).
Peace in the Hood, an organization for gang prevention and intervention, reportedly discovered the hats and notified the retailer who in turn informed New Era.
"We first received reports of the hats from our outreach workers, two of them being former gang members," explained El-hajj Khalid A. Samad, executive director of Peace in the Hood. "We got together with several other groups and talked about a way to proactively address the situation."
The logos on the hats represented gangs from "Da Valley" (Garden Valley housing project), "10-5," for the 105th Street gang called Waste-5 and "HVD" for the street gang on Harvard Avenue.
"We had no knowledge the logo on our cap was a gang logo," said Gerry Matos, senior vice president of marketing for New Era Cap Co. "Once we were alerted, we immediately contacted the retailer and had the caps recalled."
Mato revealed that the company plans to take steps to ensure that it never happens again.
"We plan to work with police gang suppression units to get the names of gangs across the U.S.," Mato said. " We also have told our sales force to ask 'why' if a logo is obscure."
The recalled hats were shipped back to New Era Cap Co. and will be destroyed along with their logo designs.
Source: sohh.com