“We might be on track for the worst advent calendar I’ve ever opened,” content creator Kayla Ryan said in a TikTok video this week, referring to the $148 Skims 12-day advent calendar that customers have been ripping apart for the past several days.
“I could get these at Dollar Tree,” she continued, pulling three unpacked hair ties from the day three slot on the advent calendar. The $148 box held keychains, bobby pins, scrunchies, and hair ties—but none of the bodysuits or loungewear that made Kim Kardashian’s company so popular.
Countless videos like Ryan’s have flooded social media for the past several days, prompting Skims to scramble to contain the fallout. In response to the online outrage, the company “personally contacted every customer who purchased the calendar and offered them a choice of a full refund or a SKIMS credit to put towards other products,” a spokesperson told other outlets.
Skims did not respond to multiple requests for comment from Fortune.
The catch, according to the email buyers received, is that a cash refund means sending the calendar back, while shoppers who opt for store credit keep it. That detail led to some theories that Skims had purposefully rage-baited customers.
“Skims knew what they were doing with that advent calendar. I’d bet money it was intentional,” Jessica Tillery, a senior vice president of brand communications for Allison Worldwide, wrote in a LinkedIn post this week.
“Every dollar spent over that $148 credit is new revenue for them,” Tillery wrote. “Every person who comes back to shop with that credit is a repeat purchaser.”
Data shows gift-card overspending does happen. Nearly 60% of shoppers say they’d go past a card’s balance when using it, spending $73 more on average, according to Blackhawk Network’s 2026 research. A 2025 study by Northwestern Kellogg School of Management lecturer Ata Jami also found shoppers are more likely to spend money they get back from returns, and more inclined to splurge with it, since it doesn’t sting the way spending regular cash does.
Why some execs think the marketing stunt theory falls apart
But other marketers and consumer researchers who spoke with Fortune don’t buy it. Customers who feel ripped off don’t spend like someone holding a birthday gift card, they say, and new social-listening data shows the negativity sticking around even as the online chatter dies down. For a company that raised $225 million last year at a $5 billion valuation, the steeper price may be shoppers’ trust in the brand.
“I don’t buy the stunt theory,” Chris Ribeiro, founder of consumer insights firm Starlight Analytics and a marketing professor at Rutgers Business School, told Fortune. “Any time you alienate your core customer and make them feel stupid, that’s bad marketing in my opinion.”
Ribeiro said the credit shouldn’t be confused with a windfall: “This store credit is the customer’s own $148, following a poor experience,” he added.
Starlight’s tracking of U.S. social posts about Skims and the calendar found negative posts beat positive ones by about eight to one between Nov. 2 and Nov. 11. And as the total number of posts fell off, negativity grew to dominate what was left. It made up 13% of mentions on Nov. 6 and 76% on Nov. 11, a figure drawn from a partial day of data.
Others think the problem started long before the unboxing videos went live.
“No brand wakes up hoping its holiday launch gets called overpriced junk,” Nataly Kelly, chief marketing officer of consumer insights platform Zappi, told Fortune. “This is a product that never got checked against what shoppers think $148 should buy.”
Zappi’s research shows just one in 10 consumers sticks solely to name brands, suggesting brand loyalty alone won’t carry a weak product.
“A logo can’t carry a box of hair ties anymore,” Kelly said.
Ben Metcalfe, founder of BlackFire Marketing, told Fortune that offering store credit is “smarter than just a refund” because it gets shoppers back in the door. Plenty of that money goes untouched, though. Roughly 43% of Americans hold leftover gift cards, vouchers or store credit, with an average of $244 unspent, according to a 2024 Bankrate survey.
Metcalfe expects Skims to weather the cost of a single calendar, but the bigger risk is what customers remember long term.
“Negative attention can boost awareness, but awareness isn’t loyalty,” he said. “Brands can survive a single viral mistake, but they struggle when their customers start to see a pattern.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com