Target cuts ties with textile maker over lower-quality sheets

On Friday, Target announced that it was severing ties with Welspun India, one of India’s largest suppliers of textiles. The decision came after an investigation in which Target concluded that more than 750,000 Egyptian cotton sheets and pillowcases were actually made from lower-quality cotton.

Target said it was already reaching out to its customers and issuing refunds.

The company issued the following statement on its website:

One of Target’s vendors, Welspun Global Brands (Welspun), was one of the producers of Egyptian Cotton 500-thread count sheets under the Fieldcrest label for Target. After an extensive investigation, we recently confirmed that Welspun substituted another type of non-Egyptian cotton when producing these sheets between August 2014 and July 2016. Neither Target nor Fieldcrest had any knowledge of this substitution. These sheets were produced by a number of vendors and only one of those vendors was substituting product. This was a clear violation of both Target’s Code of Conduct and our Standards of Vendor Engagement, and was contrary to the high ethical standards to which we hold ourselves, and our vendors.