This Valentine’s day, Sears is dealing with its marketplace making things perhaps a little too hot for some to handle. For those unaware, Sears has a marketplace where they allow other companies to sell products — be it glasses, lingerie, or otherwise. As such, the companies selling their products are able to use their own images within the product ads in the marketplace, and, apparently, Sears hasn’t been doing a very good job of monitoring/filtering those images.
As first spotted by a user on Reddit, when you performed a search on sears.com for “cami top,” the results yielded some rather racy imagery that many would consider inappropriate for the retailer’s site. The primary result people noted is below (with my SFW (Safe For Work) edits, of course):
As of the time of this writing, however, a search for “cami top” on sears.com currently redirects you to Sears’s home page, and many of the results that originally returned from the search have either been removed from Sears’s site, or edited to show the following in the search results:
But even though Sears is obviously aware and taking action, current searches on their marketplace don’t have to be too creative to still yield racy results that deserve filtered treatment:
All I have to say is, “What about the children, Sears!? Think about the children, man!” Lighthearted joking aside, I expect the amount of attention that has been generated from this will motivate Sears to reconsider the openness of the platform their marketplace currently operates on.
What are your thoughts? Obviously, adults browsing adult-oriented clothing/material is fine, but how much — if at all — do you feel Sears should restrict their marketplace due to minors? Do you think the “mature content” image in search results will suffice? Let us know what you think in the comments below!
-Stephen Chapman
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