For decades, Burlington Coat Factory has been one of the most cutting-edge retail IT shops anywhere by being first—or close to first—in its deployments of Unix, Oracle, the Web, E-mail, TCP/IP, symmetrical multiprocessing and Linux, among many others. But even that type of IT pedigree couldn't help the discount clothier do what hundreds of associates could do manually. Last week, that cost the chain a $1.5 million penalty for selling recalled children's clothing.
The penalty, from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), was issued because the government said Burlington had deliberately and knowingly sold recalled children's clothing.