I commented quickly last nighton the topic.
Just in relation to the more theocratic comments - no system is perfect, be it the extremes of totalitarian soviet communist (have not seen a quote from Das Kapital in a while) or raw open market capitalist, or any other system for that matter. John Greys book Black Mass gives ample demonstration of this.
In the past 20 years we have seen the colapse of both systems, either through protest or bail-out
Naomi Kleins book No Logo is perhaps a better example of what is referred to as Corporatocracy by people like John Perkins and Jessie Ventura.
Essentially the brand - be it Surftech or Calvin Klein - is more important than the product. I have seen cars, mass produced and fresh out of the factory, branded with Quiksilver logos. Quiksilver licence their brand to a third party, and have no input to product design, build or distribution.
Waterford chrystal, a quintessential Irish product is now produced in Eastern Europe - but still carries the name. The primary shareholders are not even Irish. People will still buy Waterford Chrystal because of the perception that it is a high end Irish product, but they are buying a label. The movement of production has not reduced the price, but it has increased the corporate profits. There website is Waterford.com, the name of a county in Ireland, there is a heavy emphasis on their Irish heritage, but nothing about the outsourcing, the closure of the factory, the laying off of workers. The perception the website creates is that of high quality and Irish. I cannot see why under EU law can be produced in one place and named after another, names like Parma ham, Champagne and others are protected in this way.
However, if we relate that to surfing, adverts are of big waves, girls in bikinis, camper vans, sunsets and tropical beaches - not of mass production of neoprene suits or branded jeans in a landlocked region of China. They do not show child labour in the Phillipines or Tailand, they do not show oiltankers going in and container ships going out - but we ignore the latter and embrace the former.
In the case of surftech, Randy French took tried and trusted designs. In his defence I believe that from the production of a board, the original type designer gets a small fee. He moved production to a low cost base and started making products. Whether that is Africa, Asia or elsewhere is immateriel - quite often to reduce corporate tax or take advantage of inducements a corporation in the US will move to another state, or in the EU, move to another country.
He himself has done nothing unusual, he runs a corporate entity, his job and duty is to maximise the profits of share holders. In order to do this he needs to maximise unit profit - to achieve that aim there are two industry standards. Create demand and reduce production costs. However I do believe there is are moral and ethics questions in this business model.
The model in itself is no different to a t-shirt company, probably the same shirt sold at wallmart for $2 can have a label like O BillaBodyQuikCurl added and be sold in a surfshop for $20.
And with a slick marketing program, he creates a demand - We as a society are willing to pay that difference. It has gotten worse, labels used to be on the inside of a shirt, and logos discrete. Nowadays we plaster the logo across the chest, back, and anywhere else we can put them - we have become marketing tools.
What does bother me deeply is working conditions. Under the illusion of consumer choice (itself determined by income, not any altruistic corporate motive) we accept the exploitation of overseas workers and lax environmental controls.
When there was an article done in The Surfers Path about the Surftech boards, they spoke of EU level safety, hygene and environmental standards at the surftech factory. In the same article there was a photo of a worker wearing a baseball cap, tshirt, shorts and open toe sandals while working with chemicals - this does not add up.
In addition dumping was mentioned during this posting. We have products that sell at a high price because of a perception of exclusivity and status, however - this does reach a critical mass, at that point people will be unwilling to pay a higher price for something percieved as common.
When that happens, because of the volume of product, the price can be dropped rapidly to compete with cheaper brands that - even though they have the same production cost, do not have the same mark-up.
In essence, Surftech are just following a model well established in our current system. As long as we accept that system, we are equally at fault - And No, I do not own a surftech board, or an O BillaBodyQuikCurl piece of clothing for that matter, but my wetsuits, boots, hddie and gloves were made in China, and I still dont know of a good wetsuit made in the EU or US.
