Bringing Down a NYC Fur Store
Development-wise, this was a small weekend project with minimal technical challenges and an emphasis on design and quick turnaround. However - the whole story is a bit longer.
Why Fur?
Animals in the fur industry - like animals used in other industrial sectors, are caged, exploited, and ultimately violently killed well before their natural lifespan. However, public perception of fur is widely negative, unlike many other animal industries such as dairy, beef, leather, etc. 19 European countries have banned fur production. Cities such as Los Angeles, Cambridge, and São Paulo have banned fur sales. New York City (where I’m currently based) has a 75% approval for banning fur sales in the city.
A 3-minute video below shows the many cruel aspects of fur farming, but the TLDR is fur farming is harmful due to:
- Animal welfare concerns - Animals are kept in terrible conditions are physically abused, and often literally develop psychosis.
- Worker concern - Slaughterhouse workers are at very high risk for PTSD and have a high risk for physical injuries.
- Public health concerns - Denmark killed 17 million minks in 2020 after a coronavirus mutation happened on a mink farm. This is not unusual, as diseases abused animals packed closely together are breeding grounds for new viruses.
- Environmental impact - Breeding fur animals leads to local pollution due to waste runoff, as well as the climate impact from all the resources needed to breed and maintain livestock.
For all these reasons, animal activists have been protesting department stores and fashion brands since the early 1980s. While it’s disappointing that a new generation is still doing the same thing 40 years later, there have been significant victories since then. Brands such as Nordstrom, Versace, Calvin Klein, and many more have gone fur-free thanks to the tireless activists shining a light on this industry.
The Campaign
This campaign was run entirely by the NYC Animal Defence League (ADL). Endless thanks to their leadership and planning. They announced a new fur-free target at the end of October - ZCRAVE. It’s a small boutique in SoHo, with little to distinguish it from the many high-end mannequin-filled storefronts that litter the streets of lower Manhattan. However, one look at their racks and on their website reveals that they are one of the few places selling fur in NYC - and a lot of it.
ZCRAVE online catalog with a lot of fur coats
The ADL launched a pressure campaign against the store, organizing weekly protests and recurring digital actions. Week after week in the bitter NYC winter, we were in front of the store and behind our computers, sending emails, signing petitions, and leaving social media comments.
Activists protesting the ZCRAVE storefront
Me and my girlfriend protesting on a cold and wet NYC afternoon
While most bystanders were supportive or at least indifferent of our cause, there were times when things got aggressive. We had passersby scream at us for being loud (we only held protests during the early afternoon on weekends), call us hypocrites for eating meat/wearing leather (we’re all vegan), or tell us to protest something more important like the genocide in Gaza (many of us did). And to top it off, there were frequently 10+ cops present for a protest attended by less than 20 people.
6+ police pinning down a protestor who yelled at shoppers
However, what we thought would initially be a few-week campaign was dragging into nearly 5 months - with the CEO doubling down on her decision to sell fur and our actions feeling increasingly useless. Many weekends I would question what I was doing attending these protests, and whether anything we were doing actually mattered.
In February, one of the ADL organizers had the idea to make a website to show all the shady business practices the store engaged in, from drop shipping to ripping off designs and terrible product reviews. Instead of attacking their ethical treatment of animals, the idea was to paint the picture of a fraudulent business that no reasonable consumer would want to shop at, fur or not. Because I was a frequent protest attendant and a web developer by trade, I volunteered to make the website with a deadline of less than a week.
The Website
I was sent a link to a list of screenshots compiled by the team, showing off negative reviews and shady business practices. I sketched a few simple layouts in my notebook and played around in a very basic Figma file before starting to build.
Very bare bones Figma document
The visual style would be minimal - I wanted the content to speak for itself (and I also didn’t have time for anything more than that). I tried to lean into ZCRAVE’s black-and-white color palette and angular aesthetic. I wanted to use their design elements against them and create a website with even more authority than theirs.
Logo designed for the website
I used Svelte for this project, which has been my framework of choice lately for personal projects. It allowed me to develop lightning-fast without much boilerplate and still have access to a large developer community and the plugins that I needed. At the end of the development, I could have a single-page static site with a small bundle size that loaded quickly.
Here’s the final result:
Impact
This site was officially unveiled at ZCRAVE’s New York Fashion Week event. Protestors disrupted the show, pouring red paint signifying blood on the steps to the entrance and holding posters with the website link. Over the next few days, activists flooded Instagram, Facebook, and other online spaces with a link to the website - urging people to see for themselves if ZCRAVE was a scam.
And after only a week of having the website up, we got a press release from ZCRAVE.
ZCRAVE press release announcing a fur-free policy
We can’t say for sure what the final nail in the coffin was - but after months of seemingly zero progress, ZCRAVE seemed spooked by the website and what having damaging information in a single easy-to-find place like that could do to their brand.
Conclusion
I was just a tiny part of this campaign against ZCRAVE. I attended the protests, led some chants, and made a website. But the main credit goes to the NYC Animal Defense League organizers. They were the ones making and bringing posters, posting about meeting times, and worked with ZCRAVE to get fur off their shelves once they committed to going fur-free. Any long campaign like this is a multi-pronged group effort; everyone has something they can offer. If you’re considering activism for a cause you believe in - get involved. Showing up to protests and joining online communities is the first step to building connections and increasing your involvement to make a real difference in the world.