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It's Pride Month. It's also that time of year where companies
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swap their logo to their rainbow version.
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A lot of businesses and companies collaborate with queer business owners to
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highlight pride products and merge.
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But what happens when these companies change their mind?
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Latina queer business owners,
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Jen and Vero from shop JZD are here to share their experience
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ladies, how are you doing,
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Yemen? Hi. Thank you so much for having us.
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Of course, thank you for coming on.
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We really appreciate it.
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So give us the rundown on what happened.
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Why did Target pull your collaboration collection from its shelves?
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We worked with Target for Hispanic Heritage Month.
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And then when we were in that process,
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we also got contracted to work for pride.
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This was pride last year.
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And so we designed a beautiful collection.
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We made all of these beautiful products.
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And then before pride month even started,
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Target made the decision to pull a majority of the products
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not just from our brand but from other queer owned businesses
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And at first the story that we heard from other Target
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employees that were JZD customers that were emailing us and be like
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hey, this is happening was that they were prioritizing swimwear
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sales in the what they call the Bible belt.
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So what you can imagine is Texas Georgia,
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North Carolina, South Carolina,
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you know all that area,
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they just decided, oh,
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we want to prioritize swimwear sales.
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It's what we were being told,
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not by target but by employees that were messaging us saying,
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hey, what do you know what's going on?
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Can you stop what's going on?
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these are the states that have the most anti LGBT bills being
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passed. And so at first we had no idea what was
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happening. We were like,
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We tried to reach out to people in our team that had
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been communicating with us.
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We literally found out from DM on Instagram emails and emails from
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employees from Target. Wow,
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because I remember seeing it at my Target,
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but I saw it and I was so happy for you.
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I was like, oh my God,
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it was such an exciting week.
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We went from the highest,
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highest 8321 premiere of the J Hi Mia.
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And I just get emotional because I think back to when I
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was a kid and how much I denied myself being who I
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really was. I saw the video because I'm like,
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damn, dude, you know,
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at this point, we knew the items had been taken down
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We had already been getting D MS from our customers that
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had tried to go into the target stores and they weren't allowing
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Even if it was still out,
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they would go to check out and Target would be like,
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I'm so sorry, I can't tell you this and take it
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away from them online orders and like curbside or store pickup orders
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were being canceled without telling the customers why.
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So we knew all of that and we knew they were not
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going to put the items back up like that was,
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that was gone. So our thing was at this point,
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we want Target to put out a statement and say we stand
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with the queer community,
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the LGBT community and not just say like,
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hey, we're being bullied.
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So I'm going to take a step back and leave them in
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the forefront because our branding was on all of these items,
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images, our picture together as wife and wife was on the
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I don't know, I mean we were in the middle of
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it but all the Tik Tok videos and the Instagram videos and
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literally they would grab our shirts and our faces right there and
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they would say like they're pedophiles out there.
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They come for our Children and they're trying to shove this down
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my Children. You know,
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like we got called the absolute worst things that you could ever
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imagine. And Target just was like,
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bye like I have no idea.
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Like, I'm just gonna leave you guys out there.
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Like I put your face out there,
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I put your brand out there now,
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I'm in trouble and I'm stepping back and you've got to deal
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with it on your own.
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How can people right now come and support you guys and,
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and buy your products the best thing.
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It's not just for us,
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but like support queer businesses and shop directly from small queer owned
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brands. And that makes the biggest difference because we turn around
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and we go back and we support other queer brands.
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Yeah, so they can find us at shop J CD across
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all social medias. And our website is also Shop J cd.com
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Thank you guys so much.
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We appreciate you guys.
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I know this is a very,
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very hard topic to talk about.
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It's very, you know,
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brings up a lot of emotion.
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So I appreciate your vulnerability,
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the both of you guys and I'm,
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I'm gonna continue to support and I know our community will too
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Thank you so much for having us and for your support
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to us. Thank you for you guys.
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