Levi’s to expand gender neutral line amid ‘consumer appetite’ despite Bud Light backlash: CEO

The boss of Levi Strauss — the nation’s oldest jeans company — said he intends to grow its gender neutral line of denim products because there’s “consumer appetite for that.”

CEO Chip Bergh shook off any fears of a Bud Light-type backlash against his 170-year-old company as he revealed the San Francisco-based brand is “slowly” building out unisex clothing options.

“We know that some women buy some men’s products and some men buy women’s products. We know that that goes on, we’ve got the research and the data to show it,” Bergh said during an Axios BFD event in San Francisco on Wednesday.

Bergh, sporting a denim-on-denim look, promoted Levi’s gender neutral efforts in response to a question that referenced “Bud Light’s recent marketing stunt.”

“How do you market products in a world where people are more aware of their gender identities?” asked moderator Hope King, Axios’s senior business reporter, according to Mail Online.

King also referenced “a recent study” that revealed “about 1% of adults currently describe themselves as transgender, non-binary, non-conforming (or) gender fluid.”

The 65-year-old Levi’s CEO didn’t address the Bud Light controversy, but instead shared that Levi’s “actually has a gender neutral line.”

“It was a small collection,” he said, suggesting that the company is seeking to grow the line as data shows women and men buying products made for the opposite gender.

Levi’s first gender fluid line, the Line 8 collection, was released in 2017. The press release from the launch said that the “selection of products (are) designed to be worn by anyone, regardless of gender.”

In 2019, Levi’s posted a guide to unisex shopping. The following year, the brand released a blog post that clarified the Levi’s iconic 501 jeans are made “for a variety of bodies, no matter the gender,” the post read.

While unisex clothing has become part of mainstream fashion, Bud Light has seen its sales dive by as much as 30% in some regions of the country since its tie-up with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney on April 1.

In early April, the nation’s top-selling beer brand sent Mulvaney a custom Bud Light can with her face on it to celebrate her “365 Days of Girlhood.”

The can was never available for public sale, but when Mulvaney posted a photo of the can to her millions of Instagram followers, critics immediately bashed Bud Light for going woke.

The Anheuser-Busch-owned brand has since been on a downward spiral, with nationwide retail sales of Bud Light down 23.4% versus a year ago in the week of April 29, according to Bump Williams Consulting and NielsenIQ data. The figure is worse than the 21.4% decline Bud Light suffered the week earlier.

Most recently, other beers under the Anheuser-Busch umbrella have begun to suffer. Sales of the company’s Budweiser brand fell 11.4% in the week ending April 29.

And Michelob Ultra — which ranks third in the US behind Bug Light and Modelo Especial — were down 4.4%, according to Bump Williams data.