Homeware shop mocked for selling $75 bundles of sticks

Homewear store Anthropologie is selling birch sticks for £40 (NZ$75.50) per bundle. Photo / Anthropologie.com

Homeware shop Anthropologie has been mocked for selling sticks for £40 (NZ$75.50) a bundle.

The retailer, renowned for selling for selling expensive — but sometimes unnecessary — items, claims the handful of birch twigs will add a "rustic quality" to people's homes.

Anthropologie's website reads: "If you're looking to bring a rustic quality to your home, then this bundle of birchwood is the perfect piece for you!"

The bundle contains 18 birch twigs at more than £2 (NZ$3.80) per twig, leading shoppers to complain that they could go out for a walk and pick up some similar ones for nothing.

It is not the first time Anthropologie has been mocked for its obscure, verging on useless offerings: it once became the butt of a joke on an episode of the popular cartoon Family Guy.

In the episode, it was portrayed as selling a ping pong table in the shape of Easter Island, as well as a telephone made of vintage phone book paper which doesn't make any calls.

A company spokesperson said the sticks were 'not overpriced' when compared with the £7.50 high street florists in the UK typically charged for a single 'Christmas branch'. Photo / Anthropologie.com

Meanwhile members of the public have begun taking to social media to mock the twigs. Posting on Twitter, Gem Redmond-Mundy wrote: "My garden's worth a fortune!"

And Barbara Harnisch posted: "A LOT of birch twiggy stuff is available. My neighbour had a couple of logs stood on end in a basket outside her front door. Had some fake flowers, too. I am far too obtuse to understand."

An Anthropologie spokesman said: "Our large (80cm) decorative branches are a lovely contemporary decoration for Christmas. Used with foliage real or faux they add drama into floral arrangements which some people choose to invest in over traditional trees.

"For the £40 you actually get over 20 branches and even though £40 might seem like a high price tag individually, they are less than £2 and they are all natural birch wood that you can keep for ever and decorate each year however you like all over your house.

"At Anthropologie, art and creativity are at the core of the brand so we love to encourage our customers to be creative at home.

"If you look anywhere on the high street for a Christmas branch at a florist a single twig is around £7.50, so this is not overpriced comparatively."