Marketing & Communications Marketing & Communications

Unwieldy Restoration Hardware Catalogs Stir Social Media, Consumer Backlash

A few weeks ago, Restoration Hardware mailed out its annual catalog. Only, this one weighed 17 pounds. The 13 different 'source books,' as the company calls them, had 3,300 pages and were delivered by UPS. Consumers reacted furiously to what was seen as a wasteful move by the company.People took to social media to lambast the company, vent their frustration and organize. In addition to the perceived environmental impact of the catalog, consumers were upset about the unsolicited mailing to many who had never even shopped at the store before.

By Aarthi Rayapura | Published 10 years ago | About a 4 minute read

People took to social media to lambast the company, vent their frustration and organize. In addition to the perceived environmental impact of the catalog, consumers were upset about the unsolicited mailing to many who had never even shopped at the store before.

A twitter hashtag search for #restorationhardware yields infuriated consumers posting pictures and chastising the company. Tweets range from anger to calls for action to humor. Many ranted on Facebook, blogged about the possible uses for the catalog and even got together to take action.

A Tumblr page called “Deforestation Hardware” organized a mass return of the unwanted mailings to an RH store in Santa Monica, California. In a similar move, residents in the San Francisco Peninsula returned nearly 2,000 pounds of the catalog to its Palo Alto store. The Story of Stuff Project is gathering signatures to pressurize RH to stop the mailings. And a related Facebook group called Stop the Source Book urged people to “Join the ‘Joycott’ to end retail mass mailings.” Many asked people to unsubscribe from future mailings on the RH site.

Such cumbersome catalogs are not new to the company. The catalogs, which began in 2011 with 616 pages and weighed three pounds, have been growing every year, with this year's being the most massive. Perhaps due to anticipated misgivings or previous run-ins with irate customers, the bundle included a separate sheet titled Our Source Book Sustainability Initiative. According to the company, the source books are mailed once a year, the paper is Forest Certified, RH is the founding sponsor of The Verso Forest Certification grant program and its shipping is carbon-neutral.

Critics argue that the claims are dubious. The catalog’s paper is PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest certification)-certified, which is questionable compared to more credible certifications such as the Forest Stewardship Council’s — PEFC accepts paper from the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, which is backed by logging and paper companies. Moreover, according to RH, the shipping of the catalogs is carbon-neutral through offsets purchased by UPS. But shipping is only a small factor in the catalog's greenhouse-gas emissions, which largely come from its disposal when it's sent for recycling or to landfills. RH claims that Heavier load = Lighter Carbon Footprint — the theory being that it only sends out the catalog once a year, hence reducing transportation emissions — but does not back it with any data. The lack of information and transparency over the exercise has led to greenwashing allegations.

Even though the catalogs are available online and through apps on the company's site, Catalog Spree, a startup that works with companies to put their shoppable catalogs and lookbooks online, has offered to work with RH. It claims that 15 of its employees received the catalog and urges RH to give them a call to go digital.

According to the The Chicago-Tribune, Restoration Hardware CEO Gary Friedman said that the negative comments on social media represent a small percentage of the people who received them and that they have generated even more business than expected.

"No one has an offering that is remotely comparable," Friedman said in the report. "Our Source Books are an important part of our multi-channel, go-to-market strategy and cannot be replaced by the Internet, where the smallest retailer in the world can look as dominant as the largest retailer, and it would require a customer to click 10,000 times to understand the difference," Friedman told ABC News.

Perhaps Restoration Hardware should give more credence to the backlash — recent studies have found that more than 50 percent of Americans are willing to pay more for sustainably delivered products, and for those from companies that show (rather than merely talking about) a commitment to positive social and environmental impacts.