Have you ever had someone snip the tag off your new clothes? Lately, AI-generated advertisements from several sportswear brands, including Warrior and Peak, have featured this jarring scene: a woman uses scissors to cut the tag off a man's new garment, the man is angry and anxious, while the woman beside him smiles and says, "It's comfortable, why return it?" or "Two discounts is a good deal, why not repurchase in the livestream."
These AI ads immediately sparked controversy. Many netizens noted that in the videos, all the people whose tags were cut were men, while all the ones doing the cutting were women, questioning whether the ads were shifting the return chaos from the women's clothing sector onto male customers, which clashes with the reality that men's offline return rates are extremely low. Moreover, the brands involved mostly target male customers, yet the ads directly presuppose their target users as "malicious returners." "Are they abandoning their core customer base?" "Without a clear explanation, I definitely won't spend another cent on these brands," some commented.
Currently, the controversial videos from Warrior and Peak have been taken down, Warrior's official Weibo has enabled curated comments, and customer service at the two authorized stores involved said they were unaware of the matter. When contacted as a consumer, Warrior's marketing department said they "hadn't seen this ad yet" and had reported the issue internally. Peak's customer service explicitly stated that authorized stores can independently publish ads during operations without headquarters review, adding, "The issue has been reported to the relevant person in charge, and a reply will be given within three working days."
Target Users Labeled as "Malicious Returners"? Customer Service: Authorized Stores Have Operational Autonomy
Recently, the topic "Many brands are cutting tags simultaneously" trended on Weibo. Some netizens compiled the commonalities among these videos: the same scenes, the same scripted lines, and even the tag-cutting motions were identical. "This doesn't look like different brands filming separately; it's more like the same template mass-produced," one netizen commented. The controversy quickly escalated. Some argued the ads imply that consumers "can't return items once the tag is cut," leading into subsequent large discounts; but more pointed out that it's women's clothing that actually has high return rates, yet the ads pin the "wants to return" label on men, which is a reversed gender stereotype.
According to statistics, under a Weibo post with 129 comments, 53% of users expressed strong attitudes, saying they would blacklist the brands involved to show dissatisfaction with the marketing. Another 30% were confused and puzzled by the brands collectively adopting low-quality and anti-intellectual marketing strategies, questioning their judgment, while 17% were glad they had never bought from these brands. According to the column's investigation, the controversial ads mainly came from the Warrior Luyou specialty store and the Peak Huixinyang apparel specialty store. When the column consulted customer service at both stores, both said they were unaware of the matter. Previously, however, customer service at the Peak Huixinyang store had responded to media that the video screenshots did indeed belong to that store's account, but that the screenshots alone couldn't confirm whether a specific product was targeted.
Subsequently, when the column called Warrior and Peak as a consumer, the responses were markedly different. A staff member from Warrior's marketing department said "Warrior Luyou" is indeed an authorized store, but they were not familiar with the specific ad placements and content review of authorized stores. The staff member said they hadn't noticed the situation yet and "had recorded it and reported it to the company." In contrast, Peak's customer service was more direct. When asked whether authorized stores could publish ads independently without review, the customer service gave an affirmative answer. The operator also said the incident had been reported to the responsible person and promised a reply within three working days.
Notably, Warrior and Peak were not the only brands involved. According to netizens' additions, authorized stores of Dickies, Mark Fairwhale, Romon, and others had also posted highly similar "tag-cutting" ads. The scripts, lines, and filming styles of these ads were almost identical. Whether these highly similar videos were independently created or mass-produced by the same agency remains unclear.
In this regard, Zhan Junhao, a well-known crisis public relations expert and partner at Fuzhou Gongsun Ce PR, told the column that such gender-topic-bait marketing easily erodes the goodwill of national brands. "Warrior and others rely on public sentiment for recognition. The ads deliberately use gender-swap narratives and reinforce stereotypes, not only failing to convey product value but creating a sense of opposition; even if the videos come from stores, many consumers will project negative impressions directly onto the main brand, genuinely consuming long-built public affection."
Can You Still Return After Cutting the Tag?
In fact, the ad's implication that "you can't return after cutting" is not entirely unfounded. According to previous reports, e-commerce women's clothing return rates generally range from 50% to 80%, with livestream channels even exceeding 80%, while in 2019 that figure was only about 30%. The apparel industry has become a "disaster zone" for e-commerce returns, and high return rates are eating into merchants' profits. Chaos like "wear and return" keeps emerging: some buy Hanfu, take photos, and return; some return performance costumes in bulk; others wear down jackets to Harbin for a trip and then apply for returns with plane tickets in hand.
To combat high return rates, merchants have devised various tactics: oversized tags big enough to hinder try-ons, combination locks on clothes, tamper-evident strips that tear upon removal... Some even sew "Do not remove for try-on" labels onto garments, treating removal as affecting secondary sales. The "return battle" between brands and consumers is intensifying. As for whether cutting the tag still allows returns, policies vary across stores and brands. Currently, customer service at the two Warrior and Peak stores said they support 7-day no-reason returns and exchanges, "as long as the tag itself is still there, whether it's attached to the garment doesn't matter."
However, Peak's headquarters customer service said the headquarters uniformly requires that "the tag must be completely and intact attached to the product," but "if individual stores allow returns with the tag removed, that's the store's own handling. If they think they can sell it and it won't affect our headquarters' inventory, we won't intervene." In other words, headquarters sets the rules, stores execute them. The same garment might be returnable at one store but not another. This discrepancy is also reflected on the consumer side. A poll by the column asking "Do you think you can still return within 7 days without reason after cutting the tag?" showed 49.2% of netizens believed "No, the tag is proof of the item being intact; cutting it affects secondary sales," 38.0% believed "Yes, consumer law says it's returnable if it doesn't affect secondary sales; brands can't use the tag as an excuse," and 12.8% said "Hard to say; whether it's been worn is key, not whether the tag is cut."
Legally, this issue is not black and white either. The Interim Measures for 7-Day No-Reason Returns of Online Purchased Goods stipulate that for apparel, "trademark labels removed or cut" is considered the item not being intact, and merchants may refuse 7-day no-reason returns. But Legal Daily previously pointed out that if the tag is an oversized tag, combination lock, or other design hindering normal try-on, and the consumer removes it for inspection or try-on, as long as the garment shows no wear and doesn't affect secondary sales, it can still be returned. "The key criterion for whether it can be returned is whether it affects secondary sales," a legal professional said.
Experts: Brands Have Supervisory Obligations Over Authorized Dealers
The brands most affected by this "tag-cutting" marketing are the national brands Warrior and Peak. In fact, Warrior itself does not lack visibility. As of 2025, Warrior's total online GMV exceeded 15 billion yuan, with over 3,000 offline stores globally. However, under its asset-light model, Warrior's loose management of third-party authorized stores has often been criticized. A franchisee previously revealed that Warrior treats franchise stores with a "free-range" approach, "no training or support at all, purely on your own." On the Black Cat Complaint platform, searches for Warrior show nearly 7,000 complaints, mostly involving authorized specialty stores on various platforms, with frequent mentions of "quality issues" and "customer service not handling." This "authorize-only, minimal-management" model may be the soil for the batch appearance of "tag-cutting" ads.
In Zhan Junhao's view, in terms of rights and responsibilities, brands do not merely "supply goods and ignore messaging" for authorized dealers; they have obligations for content standards, prior restraint, and post-hoc supervision. "Generally, stores are the direct responsible party for content publication, but if the main brand lacks management systems and fails at content risk control, it must bear joint responsibility for mismanagement and cannot simply deflect with 'not directly operated.'" Peak's situation is more delicate. Founded in 1989, the sports brand was privatized and delisted from Hong Kong stocks in 2016, and has since sought multiple times to return to A-shares, so far unsuccessfully. Performance pressure has long been evident. Last September, Peak was reported to have implemented tiered salary cuts, ranging from 10% to 30% based on salary levels, with direct-operated branch office staff seeing cuts of up to 50%. In response, Peak Chairman Xu Jingnan said at an internal executive meeting that the cuts were not company-wide, mainly targeting loss-making direct-operated departments and some high-salary positions, with overall cuts under 10%. He disclosed that the company's domestic direct-operated segment had been losing money since early 2025, accumulating losses exceeding 130 million yuan from January to July 2025, during which three branches had to be transferred.
Regarding the current issue, Zhan Junhao further stated that properly handling a public opinion crisis requires moving beyond the passive logic of simply taking down videos. "Brands should clearly state they do not endorse confrontational narratives, inspect content standards across all channel stores, and publicly impose binding rules; at the same time, they should face public sentiment rather than make excuses, turning the crisis into an opportunity for channel governance, and subsequently establish a pre-review mechanism for dealer marketing content to avoid relying on gender-topic provocation for traffic."
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