In an attempt to drum up sales during Hurricane Sandy, American Apparel sent out an email to customers Monday night offering a 20% discount off its entire site for 36 hours the superstorm barreled across the Northeast, leaving many without power and as many as 50 people dead. In order to take advantage of promotion — which was only available to the nine states hardest hit by the storm — online customers had to input the discount code “SANDYSALE” at checkout. “In case you’re bored during the storm,” the ad jauntily noted. Predictably, nobody was thrilled. New York resident David Honig expressed his less than favorable views: Really @americanapparel? Sandy Sale email blast? really? The lowest of low. RT this if you are insulted. pic.twitter.com/qLNoSNXo — David Honig (@davehonig) October 30, 2012 (MORE: American Apparel Angered by Spoofer Who Won Its Modeling Contest) Julie Wax, who runs the I Heart Heels blog, echoed the sentiment: Trying to make a SALE off of a terrible disaster is just terrible. Stop it with your cutesy puns, brands. #notcute — I Heart Heels® (@iheartheels) October 30, 2012 Many others jumped onto the bandwagon criticizing the L.A.-based retailer, including fashion blogs Refinery 29 and Racked. A company representative explained the rationale behind the move to Fashionista.com: Of course we’d never mean to offend anyone and when we put the email out yesterday it came from a good place….Retail stores are the lifeline of a brand like ours so when they are closed, we need to come up with ways to make up for that lost revenue. People forget how expensive it is to run a Made in USA brand like American Apparel and if we made a mistake here it came from the good place of trying to keep the machine going–for the sake of our employees and stakeholders. (MORE: Q&A: The Year of No Clothing Purchases) American Apparel was not the only retailer to offer discounts; according to Racked NY, retailers such as Urban Outfitters, Catbird and Lauren Moffat offered deals such as frees shipping to … Continue reading Sandy Fail: American Apparel’s Hurricane Sale Doesn’t Go Over Well