Abercrombie and Fitch Makes an Offer to "The Sitch"

To stop wearing their clothes....

Thank you Wall Street Journal for this remarkable article....Wall Street Journal <3

With their quick rise to fame, the cast of MTV reality show “Jersey Shore” has cashed in on a number of endorsement deals, including weight loss supplements, alcohol and bronzer.
But here’s a first. Teen apparel retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co. is offering to pay Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino not to wear its merchandise.

The New Albany, Ohio company released a statement Tuesday evening titled “A Win-Win Situation,” in which it stated a “deep concern” over the association between Mr. Sorrentino and the brand. A&F offered up a “substantial payment” to Mr. Sorrentino “to wear an alternate brand.”
“We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans,” the statement read.
The company also extended the pay-to-not-play offer to the other Jersey Shore reality stars and said it was “urgently waiting a response.”

About 45 minutes into the A&F quarterly earnings call Wednesday morning, after Wall Street analysts peppered executives with endless questions about inventory and gross margins, A&F Chief Executive Mike Jeffries chuckled. “Is no one going to ask about the Situation?” he said.
A few minutes later, a questioner acquiesced and asked for the back story on the situation, as it were. Last Friday, an employee approached Mr. Jeffries with what he called “terrible, terrible news” that Mr. Sorrentino had been wearing A&F product on the episode that aired the night before. “We all said, ‘Oh, that’s terrible’,” Mr. Jeffries recalled with a  groan. “What are we going to do about it?”
The solution the group came up with was to pay the reality star not to wear the product, Mr. Jeffries said, adding, “We’re having a lot of fun with it.”

Mr. Sorrentino, one of the most popular characters on the show, is known for lifting up his shirt off to reveal his abdomen muscles, more often flashing the logo on the waistband of his underwear.
As retail analysts at Nomura Securities pointed out in a research note Tuesday evening, Mr. Sorrentino was seen in the most recent episode of “Jersey Shore” wearing a pair of neon green A&F sweatpants “loudly (and proudly)” on the streets of Florence.

“Abercrombie & Fitch, their most popular shirt, they told me, is ‘Fitchuation.’ I mean, where did they get that from? Obviously from myself.”