(NEXSTAR) – Walmart removed the boots from its online marketplace after it was determined the items violated the company’s “prohibited products policy,” the retailer said.
The boots, offered by a third-party seller on the company’s Walmart Marketplace, were emblazoned with the letters “KKK” on the tongue of each shoe.
It’s unclear why the $50 boots were printed with text commonly associated with the Ku Klux Klan. The third party seller appears to be a company called “Harsuny” and the shoes were only listed as “Men’s Tactical Military Hiking Ankle Boots Outdoor Trekking Shoes”. screen grab of list of items It was shared by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which reportedly alerted Walmart on Saturday.
Walmart confirmed to Nexstar that the item was removed from its marketplace over the weekend. Officials said the shoes were never sold in stores.
A Walmart spokesperson said in a statement shared with Nextor, “This item was listed by an outside third-party seller, is inconsistent with our values, and violates Walmart’s Prohibited Items Policy. Removed: “Like other large retailers, we operate an online marketplace that enables third-party sellers to offer products to customers through our e-commerce platform. We have processes in place to prevent sellers from offering inappropriate items on our platform, but inappropriate items may still enter our platform.
“We are reviewing how this happened and will apply what we have learned to further improve our rules and processes to prevent the sale of inappropriate goods.”
As Business Insider first reported earlier this week, CAIR issued a press release thanking Walmart for removing from its platform what CAIR called “a ‘KKK’ boot with a strange and inappropriate name.” Did.
A Walmart rep confirmed that the company is in contact with third-party sellers about the item “to understand how this happened,” but no further details were revealed. No. As of Wednesday, at least some other merchandise from Haasney was still available on Walmart’s online platform, though many have been removed.
This isn’t the first time Walmart’s third-party sellers have been criticized. According to the Associated Press, the retail giant has in recent years removed t-shirts that joke about lynching journalists and graphic t-shirts that read, “I want to snort cocaine from whores,” Mashable reported. The company also took down his online list of third-party sellers of mugs playing with “Got Milk?” Grub Street reported even though the campaign slogan had “milk” replaced with a slur for the disabled.
Just this year, a children’s toy sold through a third-party seller through Walmart’s online marketplace was taken down after a video of a “joke” Playphone went viral. As TODAY reported, among the “jokes” the toy could play for users were references to Catholic priests and sexual abuse.
