Hasta La Creative!

Blogger Kat Bouska usually loves being surprised by what’s inside her monthly Stitch Fix fashion box deliveries, but the most recent one included something she truly didn’t expect: an original price tag that showed just how much she was being overcharged.

The popular subscription company charges Kat (and many others) $20 for its personal shopping service, then sends her a box with five pieces of clothing and accessories. The charm is that she can try it all on in the comfort of her own home, and send back what she doesn’t like. She can buy what she does like, and the $20 styling fee will go towards that purchase (items are $55 each, on average, per the site). If she doesn’t like any of the pieces, she can send it all back (within three days), but lose out on the $20 styling fee.

Except this time around, her $68 shorts came with another tag on it—a Nordstrom Rack tag with a discounted price of $24.95. That’s a rather shocking markup of 173%.

She’s not the only Stitch Fix fan who has noticed she might be paying too much for discount apparel. In a comment to Bouska’s Facebook post about her recent delivery, another subscriber named Kathleen Enge remarked: “My Stitch Fix pieces arrived. I loved them. Two days later one of the dresses was featured on Nordstrom Rack Haute App for 50% less.”

So are these experiences indicative of Stitch Fix customers being misled about the price and source of their purchases? In other words, is Stitch Fix routinely buying discounted clothes at retail and then selling them at a markup?

Absolutely not, says a Stitch Fix spokeswoman, who declined to be named. 

“We’re a retailer just like any other store. We purchase clothing at wholesale and sell them at retail.”

I asked why some of the service’s subscribers are finding their items at a 50% or greater discount elsewhere, and she said competing retailers often buy from the same suppliers and then set their own prices. Stitch Fix consistently prices its items at the manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP).

She went on to clarify that Stitch Fix does not buy its clothing from discount retailers such as Nordstrom Rack and then resell them.

If that’s the case, why did Kat Bouska have an item that clearly came from Nordstrom Rack with a Nordstrom Rack price tag in her Stitch Fix box?

It was a simple mixup, Stitch Fix CEO Katrina Lake told AdFreak in an email this afternoon. The shorts, she says, were sent to the wrong retailer (Stitch Fix rather than the intended Nordstrom Rack) and accidentally sent out to subscribers with the wrong tag.

“Many of our vendors work with other retail partners such as Nordstrom and Nordstrom Rack. Our vendor mistakenly shipped us product that was meant for another retailer. We have quality control processes in our warehouse to catch such errors but in this instance the tag was missed. We sincerely apologize for the mistake and we want to make sure this never happens again.

“The prices we assign to our merchandise are MSRP 100 percent of the time. Many retailers choose to discount different merchandise for promotions or anniversary sales. If a client sees an item that they purchased from Stitch Fix at a discounted price at another retailer, we will always investigate, adjust our prices internally, and credit the client for the price difference.

“We are proactively reaching out to anyone who paid $68 for the shorts and giving them credit for the difference. We are also reviewing our quality control processes to make sure that this never happens again. We are committed to an amazing client experience and should be able to provide prices that are competitive to any other retailers out there. We will work with our vendors and on our internal processes to make sure this happens moving forward.”

Stitch Fix’s website will be updated with the price adjustment policy shortly.

The clarification came a bit too late for Bouska. She says she has canceled her Stitch Fix subscription.

Just a few months after Facebook finally eased off its restrictive contest guidelines, Pinterest seems to be taking the opposite approach. In a recent round of policy revisions and clarifications, the network has greatly limited the scope of promotions that can be hosted by brands and bloggers.

In a blog post published Thursday, Pinterest marketing rep Kevin Knight laid out the many types of promotions that Pinterest isn't cool with. Specifically prohibited are promotions that:

• Suggest that Pinterest sponsors or endorses them or the promotion
• Require people to Pin from a selection (like a website or list of Pins)
• Make people Pin the contest rules
• Run a sweepstakes where each Pin, board, like or follow represents an entry
• Encourage spammy behavior, such as asking participants to comment
• Ask to vote with Pins, boards or likes
• Require a minimum number of Pins

Worth noting: Per these rules, a Pinterest contest can never have more than one entry per person, even if someone pins 100 items or engages with the contest every day for two weeks. Also, brands can't require contest participants to pin from a specific site or set of boards—a frequent tactic for helping spread branded content.

These updates come (probably not coincidentally) as Pinterest staffers have been in a lengthy email exchange with influential mom blogger Amy Lupold Bair, who had registered the trademark for the term "pinning party." When she attempted to enforce the trademark on other virtual party hosts, Pinterest's legal team told her to stop—and that her pinning parties for brand clients were in violation of their promotion guidelines anyway.

But when Lupold Bair asked for specifics on how a Pinterest promotion could or should be run, it soon became clear that the guidelines are complicated, poorly communicated (by Pinterest's own admission) and currently being observed by almost no one. When asked by Lupold Bair for a specific promotion that actually had followed the rules correctly, Pinterest policy chief Jud Hoffman acknowledged, "It's true that there aren't many examples of contests that follow our rules and encourage people to pin things that represent their authentic interests."

One upside of this week's discussions is that Pinterest has finally provided some relatively detailed explanation of its rules and reasoning. Sifting through Pinterest's lengthy responses to both myself and Lupold Bair, here are the answers to a few frequently asked questions:

Why restrict brands from allowing multiple contest entries?

"The distinction we're trying to make is between a contest where someone who creates ten boards would be entered ten times and one where the person is entered only once regardless of the number of boards she creates. We don't allow the ten board/ten entry example because we've found that people tend to create boards and pins that feel 'spammy' to their followers." —Pinterest policy director Jud Hoffman, in an email to blogger Amy Lupold Bair

What's been wrong with the way most Pinterest contests are run?

"Done well, they can be a trigger to help people think about the cool things you're doing. But they can also motivate people to add Pins they aren’t truly interested in, which is why Pins from contests can often feel irrelevant and even spammy. We don't want people to feel like they have to Pin things they don't like because it will help them win something." —Annie Tan, Pinterest Corporate Communications, in an email to Adweek.

What would a legitimate Pinterest contest look like?

"You can imagine a contest sponsored by a canned food company that asks people to create a board representing their ideal Thanksgiving meal, with the winner getting all of the ingredients to prepare that meal. As long as they don't require pinning one of their products or from a selection of pins, that contest would be fine. People would be free to put together a board that really represents their tastes and the pinner would have a chance at a great prize sponsored by the food company." —Hoffman, in an email to Lupold Bair

Will Pinterest be enforcing these rules across the board?

Depends on who you ask:

"If we see contests like the ones you seem to be helping to organize, we will stop them and also let the contest sponsor know. Seems like a situation we all would want to avoid." —Anthony Falzone, deputy general counsel for Pinterest, in an email to Lupold Bair.

"We're a small team, so unfortunately we're not able to reach everyone running contests that break our rules. Please know that we're not asking that you alone follow them. We try hard to reach out to contest sponsors as soon as we discover they are violating our rules to ask that they correct them going forward." —Hoffman, in an email to Lupold Bair.