Interesting video on luxury goods

[tonyc1]

They are everywhere,Ed. Just think how many there would be if they had discovered America or Australia!

Tony.

[JohnBarton]

Sweatshops like these are everywhere for sure. In a lot of ways they are far worse than anything you find in China because the Chinese are not alone here, they have family and friends. In New York, Los Angeles, Italy, and wherever else that you find these illegal and semi-legal factories the workers are literally indentured servants. They are coerced with the fear of deportation, threats to family back in China, and so on. The same thing applies to sweatshops staffed with immigrants of all kinds.

In China it is illegal to extort people like this and if caught a factory owner can be sentenced to death or prison.

Still, humans have shown an infinite capacity to degrade other humans in far sicker ways than any other animals ever could. It's the darkside of intelligence.

The root of the problem is the fact that so many of us are defined by the brands we own and so to keep up appearances we buy fakes that we can afford. And it's compounded by the fact that so many brand owners splash their brand on everything so that consumers come to expect it to be on everything. Thus no one really knows what is "fake" and what is "real" anymore when it comes to brands. If I see a pair of Nike shoes on sale at a street vendor's stall then I can probably figure that they are fake. But if I see them on someone's feet I have no idea if they are real or fake and I just say nice shoes dude.

So what is the answer?

Who knows. Don't buy brands unless you are 100% sure you can believe in them. Unless you are sure that they all are sweatshop-free. But how do you do this? I sure don't know.

We Americans imported Chinese sweat labor to build our railroads. We import sweat labor to harvest and process our food. I guess that we can't really fault people for doing whatever they can to survive and try to better their lives even if it's to effectively sell themselves into modern slavery.

And what about the slavers, the ones who trick workers into illegally immigrating? The ones who promise the moon?

Well, until all the industrialized nations of the world make brand theft a crime that is equal to theft otherwise then it will never stop. Until someone faces prison for making, importing, and selling copies of my goods and theft of my brands it will never stop.

So you can rail about it, denounce the players, cry about unfair competition, and be outraged but the fact is sadly that this is really bigger than all of us and goes to the heart of society's collective need to be accepted. Until the majority of people stop buying brands to feel better then the flow of fakes and the sweatshop labor needed to make them won't cease.

Sound familiar. Substitute drugs for brands in this conversation and you can see why it's too big to stop. Brand name stuff is legal.

:-)

[Kustom]

I went to "Coach" and the stuff I saw said it was made in India.

[JohnBarton]

I went to "Coach" and the stuff I saw said it was made in India.

It is not the making in India, China, Bangladesh, etc... that is the problem - high quality goods can come from anywhere. And honestly if brands didn't move their production to low cost labor lands then those low cost labor hands would just remain dirt poor and fall prey to every backwoods extortionist with enough money to buy a few sewing machines.

At least when big brands show up they raise the overall level of production and thereby empower people to gain skills and thus value in the marketplace.

The problem is of accountability of the brand owners to make sure that their products are made in a way that is consistent with basic human rights and sustainable existence AND the willingness of law enforcement and the justice system to mete out very severe penalties for brand theft.

It's a pretty easy calculation - low cost to produce vs. high retail prices equals plenty of room for unscrupulous competitors.

Morals aside why wouldn't you spend your time copying Prada bags instead of dealing drugs or some other illegal activity? If you get caught doing the Prada bags you can always wiggle out if in any number of ways and EVEN IF you are convicted you will get a slap on the wrist and be back in business tomorrow, in fact your brother has already set up another sweatshop around the corner.

Worse in my opinon are the customers for these items, and I am not talking about the single consumer, I am talking about the wholesalers who import containers of fakes.

In my industry, billiards, my signature design was ripped off blatantly and imported by all the big wholesalers. They enabled it while selling alongside the real brands. I should have sued them but they were my only source of income. So I figure that I have lost around ten million dollars in revenue, at wholesale prices, in the last 15 years due to this thievery. But I am sure it's a lot more due to all the derivatives of my design that have also made their way to the marketplace.

So, yeah, the sweatshops make these copies and offer them for sale but look at who is doing the buying. It's your Chamber of Commerce wholesale business right along side the Mafia.

A victimless crime, yeah right.

[esantoro]

If we take a Coach bag, or Ghurka bag, or Mulholland Brothers bag of today and compare it with a bag from the same company twenty or thirty years ago, will we see a difference in quality of construction? If we see a lower quality in such a company's bags today, whatever has changed in production processes in that twenty or thirty years has to have contributed to lower quality. Whether consumers care to notice such changes is another story.

I wonder if the fact that a bag is not made within the same vicinity as that of the designer, or if the designer and the craftsperson are not the same person actually leads to an inferiority in the design itself. Does the psychological makeup of those who work on an article come through in the final product?

ed

It is not the making in India, China, Bangladesh, etc... that is the problem - high quality goods can come from anywhere. And honestly if brands didn't move their production to low cost labor lands then those low cost labor hands would just remain dirt poor and fall prey to every backwoods extortionist with enough money to buy a few sewing machines.

At least when big brands show up they raise the overall level of production and thereby empower people to gain skills and thus value in the marketplace.

The problem is of accountability of the brand owners to make sure that their products are made in a way that is consistent with basic human rights and sustainable existence AND the willingness of law enforcement and the justice system to mete out very severe penalties for brand theft.

It's a pretty easy calculation - low cost to produce vs. high retail prices equals plenty of room for unscrupulous competitors.

Morals aside why wouldn't you spend your time copying Prada bags instead of dealing drugs or some other illegal activity? If you get caught doing the Prada bags you can always wiggle out if in any number of ways and EVEN IF you are convicted you will get a slap on the wrist and be back in business tomorrow, in fact your brother has already set up another sweatshop around the corner.

Worse in my opinon are the customers for these items, and I am not talking about the single consumer, I am talking about the wholesalers who import containers of fakes.

In my industry, billiards, my signature design was ripped off blatantly and imported by all the big wholesalers. They enabled it while selling alongside the real brands. I should have sued them but they were my only source of income. So I figure that I have lost around ten million dollars in revenue, at wholesale prices, in the last 15 years due to this thievery. But I am sure it's a lot more due to all the derivatives of my design that have also made their way to the marketplace.

So, yeah, the sweatshops make these copies and offer them for sale but look at who is doing the buying. It's your Chamber of Commerce wholesale business right along side the Mafia.

A victimless crime, yeah right.

[Kustom]

I wonder if the fact that a bag is not made within the same vicinity as that of the designer, or if the designer and the craftsperson are not the same person actually leads to an inferiority in the design itself. Does the psychological makeup of those who work on an article come through in the final product?

ed

It has too, if your name's on it you're going to make sure it's good.

BTW, Ed your bags are great looking.

[JohnBarton]

I can speak from personal experience as a designer who has things made at other places. They don't respect what you expect only what you inspect.

In other words as long as I am there and watching and inspecting then my cases are done to my standards and as soon as I leave they start getting worse.

The owner of the factory nor the people working the line have any emotional involvement in the product. They have no connection to the ultimate user, they don't have to face that user so why should they care what that user thinks.

The reason anything gets worse and not better Ed is purely due to the willful ignorance of consumers willing to gobble up everything and throw it away when it breaks and go buy another one. It used to be that things were made to last and when they finally did break you repaired it.

But when consumers demand cheap and disposable then that's what they get. And the factories have figured out plenty of clever ways to cut corners to maximize their profits, the brand houses don't complain as long as it looks good.

I can't tell you the number of times I have gone into a factory and seen them doing something and been like "why???" - they either have no clue or they are deliberately doing something stupid to save time or material in order to boost their profit - and they count profit in the pennies. Where we wouldn't care if a product cost a few dollars more to make it well done - they freak out over every .25cts in cost increase.

I once saw a report that claimed the disposable society began with the introduction of the TV Dinner. Makes sense to me.

[esantoro]

Many months ago, Steve Mason posted this picture of his great grandfather's leather shop. That's the real deal, the real creature.

http://leatherworker.net/forum/index.php?a...ost&id=6038

Ed

[Kustom]

I got her book from the library. It's a really good read.

[DHauser]

So, I am guessing that the idea of a "craftsman managed" system for ranking "quality" custom leatherwork has died? I have been creating professional leather products for at least 10 years and have been looking for some association or designation that ranks the "good stuff". If I am going to place an association logo on my website I want it to mean something. Many of us have worked for years to get the products right, to create works of art vs. just a bag to carry something. I started out my business from the git go with custom leather work and custom leather work only. No mass production, just one at a time. It's been tough to grow as none of us have major marketing budgets. Personally, I would love to see a new "member managed" custom leather professional designation.