Does a blood diamond have the same factor and statement then the fur industry has? Activist believe so, first animal rights activists went after the fur and leather industry. The sale of a blood diamond helps fund the African armies and rebel groups with their war efforts. According to documents the US-based Rapaport Diamond Trading Network, they want to ban the sale of diamonds from these notorious and turbulent mines in Zimbabwe. Rapaport is the largest United States buyers in diamonds. The company wants their 10,000 member base to raise awareness about human rights abuses and the forced child labor in Zimbabwe. With a ban this could help diamond mines being monitored and ensure that the diamonds aren’t taint with conflict but also not taint with human abuse. With this ban it would also help worried buyers about getting a tainted diamond. I believe that it doesn’t have the same effect as animal rights. There is a difference between animal rights and human rights. When humans are getting killed over something as such as diamond it’s really hard to stomach that something you have purchased may be at the life of someone. My views on the fur industry are I believe that they are highly mistreated and need a better way of skinning them.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20100817/wl_csm/320095_1
By Scott Baldauf Scott Baldauf – Tue Aug 17, 1:34 pm ET
Johannesburg, South Africa – First animal rights activists went after the fur industry. Then Hollywood went after “blood diamonds” that African armies and rebel groups sold to fund their war efforts. Now a significant part of the diamond industry itself – the US-based Rapaport Diamond Trading Network – wants to ban the sale of diamonds that come from certain notorious mines in the turbulent nation of Zimbabwe.
Rapaport is one of the largest buyers of diamonds in the US.
Do any of these campaigns actually work? The answer is that some do, and activists are hoping that the action taken by the 10,000-member Rapaport group will serve to raise awareness about human rights abuses and the prevalence of child labor and forced labor in Zimbabwe, and perhaps even change the way the world monitors the diamond mining industry.
“I think the significance of this is that the US diamond market is one of the biggest in the world, and when they say they will only purchase a diamond when they are sure that diamond is not from the Marange diamond fields in Zimbabwe, they are taking a moral stand,” says Tiseke Kasambala, a senior researcher on Zimbabwe for Human Rights Watch in Johannesburg.
STORY: Zimbabwe slams 'lunatic group' for banning its diamonds
Such a ban could help to force the international body that monitors the diamond trade, the so-called Kimberley Process, to ensure that diamonds are not only free of the taint of conflict, but also of the taint of more broader human rights abuses, Ms. Kasambala says. “This shows the Kimberley Process that it need to do much more, to press the government to be accountable for its behavior.â€
Diamond industry's image problemThat the diamond industry is taking steps to keep politically-tainted stones out of circulation is hardly a surprise. The market is glutted with diamonds, many of them coming out of Russia and other markets that were once off limits, and movies like the action thriller “Blood Diamondâ€
Yet the very same global diamond industry watchdog created to clean up the diamond trade in conflict zones (the Kimberley Process) has given Zimbabwe’s diamonds a clean bill of health, sending a mixed signal to consumers looking for a guilt-free purchase. And if US diamond buyers can do without a few hundred thousand Zimbabwean stones, then it is also true that Zimbabwe sellers can do without 10,000 US-based diamond traders. Which again raises the question: will this boycott work?
“You have to ask yourself is there another market, and my experience is that there is always another market for minerals,” says Laura Seay, an assistant professor of political science at Morehouse College who has studied the minerals market in conflict zones in central Africa. “One of the flaws of the Kimberley Process is that it was designed around conflict, not around inhumane conditions or other more ambiguous human rights abuses such as child labor or forced labor.”
One of the positive effects of the Kimberley Process, Ms. Seay adds, is that it did manage to raise awareness among consumers about where diamonds often come from, and how to avoid funding conflicts with one’s spending habits. “If Rapaport can be successful in raising awareness about Zimbabwe diamonds, then it could be effective. And it could push the Kimberley Process to look more broadly at other human rights abuses.”
Looking eastTo be sure, America is one of the largest markets for diamonds – even in tight economic times such as these. But there are other emerging markets, many of them in Asia, which are experiencing rapid economic growth. Last week, China replaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy after the US, and it stands ready to overtake the US in the coming decade.
“I think there are a lot of other buyers for diamonds out there, such as India, which are quite keen to buy diamonds,” says Raymond Louw, editor of the Southern Africa Report in Johannesburg. “I think this is a going to act as a token rather than a debilitating measure for the regime of [Zimbabwean President] Robert Mugabe.”
For its part, Zimbabwe’s government pointed out that its sale of 900,000 diamonds last week – the first since sanctions were lifted by the Kimberley Process last year – was completely legal and above board, and said that a ban on Zimbabwe diamonds would have little or no effect.
"If [the Rapaport group] mobilize other nations to ban our gems, then we will be left with no other options other than embarking on the Look East Policy, which over the past 10 years kept the country moving despite illegal sanctions,” says Zimbabwe's Minister of Mines, Obert Mpofu in a Monitor interview. "We will sell our stones to countries where they are welcome. We have countries like China, Malaysia, Russia, India and other Asian countries where we can market our diamonds."
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Fashion Blog Week 5
The company that was made famous by Jackie Kennedy in the 1960’s Marimekko is a clothes finisher and textile group. The company is well known for its simple lines and bright prints. This company just dropped 44 percent in its second-quarter when it expanded abroad. On Thursday the company stated they would be expanding their showrooms and stores in United States, Sweden, Germany, and South Korea. The Chief Executive Mika Ihamuotila believes with this expansion it will develop Marimekko’s business and that the company is focusing on developing the product selection and opening new stores. The Marimekko Company has been expanding to avoid bankruptcy in the 1980’s. The company’s clothes and fabrics have been featured in Sex and the City.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE67B0JO20100812
ARTICLE:
UPDATE 1-Finnish fashion house Marimekko expands abroad
* Q2 EBIT 0.588 mln eur, vs Reuters poll avg 1.18 mln eur
* Q2 sales 15.7 mln eur, vs Reuters poll avg 16.2 mln eur
* Shares down 3.2 pct
(Adds details on international expansion, shares)
HELSINKI, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Finnish clothing and textiles group Marimekko (MMO1V.HE), made famous by Jackie Kennedy in the 1960s, reported a 44 percent drop in second-quarter operating profit as it invested to expand abroad.
The company known for its bright prints and simple lines said on Thursday it would open new showrooms and stores in the United States, Sweden, Germany and South Korea this year to build on a wider economic recovery for future growth.
"I have great confidence in the development of Marimekko's business," Chief Executive Mika Ihamuotila said in a statement.
"Our focus will be on developing the product selection and opening new stores and distribution channels in the United States, northern Europe and east Asia."
Shares in Marimekko fell 3.2 percent to 11.05 euros by 0902 GMT, underperforming a flat wider Finnish market .OMXHPI, after the company's operating profit of 0.6 million euros ($0.8 million) missed all estimates in a Reuters poll. [ID:nLDE6731AC]
Sales in the April-June quarter fell 1.6 percent to 15.7 million euros, also missing all the poll estimates.
Marimekko has been expanding since narrowly avoiding bankruptcy in the 1980s. Its clothes and fabrics have since featured in the hit U.S. television series Sex and the City.
The company stuck to its guidance for roughly flat 2010 sales and operating profit. ($1=.7759 Euro) (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE67B0JO20100812
ARTICLE:
UPDATE 1-Finnish fashion house Marimekko expands abroad
* Q2 EBIT 0.588 mln eur, vs Reuters poll avg 1.18 mln eur
* Q2 sales 15.7 mln eur, vs Reuters poll avg 16.2 mln eur
* Shares down 3.2 pct
(Adds details on international expansion, shares)
HELSINKI, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Finnish clothing and textiles group Marimekko (MMO1V.HE), made famous by Jackie Kennedy in the 1960s, reported a 44 percent drop in second-quarter operating profit as it invested to expand abroad.
The company known for its bright prints and simple lines said on Thursday it would open new showrooms and stores in the United States, Sweden, Germany and South Korea this year to build on a wider economic recovery for future growth.
"I have great confidence in the development of Marimekko's business," Chief Executive Mika Ihamuotila said in a statement.
"Our focus will be on developing the product selection and opening new stores and distribution channels in the United States, northern Europe and east Asia."
Shares in Marimekko fell 3.2 percent to 11.05 euros by 0902 GMT, underperforming a flat wider Finnish market .OMXHPI, after the company's operating profit of 0.6 million euros ($0.8 million) missed all estimates in a Reuters poll. [ID:nLDE6731AC]
Sales in the April-June quarter fell 1.6 percent to 15.7 million euros, also missing all the poll estimates.
Marimekko has been expanding since narrowly avoiding bankruptcy in the 1980s. Its clothes and fabrics have since featured in the hit U.S. television series Sex and the City.
The company stuck to its guidance for roughly flat 2010 sales and operating profit. ($1=.7759 Euro) (Reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Jon Loades-Carter)
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Fashion Blog Week 3
Counterfeit products have been plaguing American businesses for years. It is estimated that the counterfeiting industry cost American businesses about $200 billion a year. Criminal have counterfeited of fashionable luxury items like $2,800 Louis Vuitton handbags, and even Kooba bags and Ugg boots. Now authorities in California have recently seized counterfeit Angel Soft toilet paper. Factors in China have been the main factor of counterfeiting luxury items. With the Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program cracking down on fake products being exported from China, what can they make? They decided to start producing knockoffs of lesser-known brands. They are easily sold on the internet priced higher than obvious fakes. They figured out that if they price the items near retail price that people don’t become suspected and buy a fake without even knowing it. The internet is becoming much harder to enforce and patrol.
In my opinion counterfeits will always plague America as long as there are high fashion items and products. This is why I always make sure the items I buy are at a retail store.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012502070_knockoffs01.html?syndication=rss
Originally published Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 3:44 PM
Comments (9) E-mail article Print view Share
In tough economy, product knockoffs get even cheaper
In this economy, even counterfeiters are trading down. After years of knocking off luxury products like $2,800 Louis Vuitton ...
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
The New York Times
Related
In this economy, even counterfeiters are trading down.
After years of knocking off luxury products like $2,800 Louis Vuitton handbags, criminals are discovering there is money to be made in faking the more ordinary — like $295 Kooba bags and $140 Ugg boots. In California, the authorities recently seized a shipment of counterfeit Angel Soft toilet paper.
The shift in the counterfeiting industry, which costs American businesses an estimated $200 billion a year, plays to recession-weary customers looking for down-market deals, the authorities say. And it has been fueled in part by factories sitting idle in China.
Almost 80 percent of the seized counterfeit goods in the United States last year were produced in China, where the downturn in legitimate exports during the recession left many factories looking for goods — in some cases, any goods — to produce.
"If there is demand, there will be supply," said John Spink, associate director of the Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program at Michigan State University. In China, he said, "It's all of a sudden them saying, 'We have low capacity. What can we make?"'
The answer is increasingly knockoffs of lesser-known brands, which are easy to sell on the Internet, can be priced higher than obvious fakes, and avoid the aggressive programs by retail companies, customs enforcement and the big luxury brands to protect their labels, officials say.
The results: Faux Samantha Thavasa bags for $113 and Ed Hardy hoodie sweatshirts for $82.50. And, bizarrely, imitations that are more expensive than the real ones: In 2007, Anya Hindmarch sold canvas totes that said "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" for $15. Now fakes are available on the Web for $99.
"If it's making money over here in the U.S., it's going to be reverse-engineered or made overseas," said Jonathan Erece, a trade-enforcement coordinator for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Long Beach, Calif. "It's like a cat-and-mouse game."
The traders in mid-price fakes are employing another new trick: By pricing the counterfeits close to retail prices — which they can do when the original product is not too expensive — they entice unsuspecting buyers.
Any savvy shopper, for example, knows a Louis Vuitton bag selling for $100 cannot be the real thing. But when NeimanMarcus.com, an authorized retailer for Kooba bags, sells them for $295, and a small website sells them for $190, a deal-hunting consumer could think she has scored a bargain. (She hasn't. The $190 bag is a fake.)
"If the price points are somewhat close, some consumers get duped into believing they're getting a real product," said Robert Barchiesi, president of the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition, a trade group. "They might be looking for a bargain, but a bargain to buy real goods."
The counterfeiters are also lifting photos and text from legitimate websites, further fooling some shoppers.
"The consumer is blind as to the source of the product," said Leah Evert-Burks, director of brand protection for Ugg Australia's parent company, the Deckers Outdoor Corporation. "Counterfeit websites go up pretty easily, and counterfeiters will copy our stock photos, the text of our website, so it will look and feel like" the company site, she said.
While all of it is illegal, the authorities do not publish statistics on what brands' products are being counterfeited. But designers and trade experts said the down-market trend in counterfeiting became more noticeable over the last year, as counterfeiters got more inventive.
The field is big: The total value of counterfeit goods seized by U.S. customs officials increased by more than 25 percent each year from 2005 to 2008, using the government's fiscal calendar. In fiscal 2009, as imports overall dropped by 25 percent, the value of counterfeit products seized dropped by only 4 percent to $260.7 million.
The official statistics capture only a piece of the problem, companies and experts say, because so many counterfeiters market directly to customers on the Internet and many of those sales go undetected by the authorities.
"Online is much harder" to patrol and enforce, said Todd Kahn, general counsel for Coach, the handbag and accessories company.
That is particularly true for smaller brands, as Anna Corinna Sellinger, co-founder and creative director of the New York clothing and accessories company Foley & Corinna, learned.
A couple of years ago, she began checking out which Foley & Corinna items were selling on eBay. Her city tote, which now retails for $485, was a popular item, but on some listings "there was something off — it's a color I never did, or a leather I never did," she said.
As other sites proliferated, and Corinna Sellinger noticed more and more Internet fakes, she stopped looking altogether.
"It's just too frustrating," she said. "You can try to do something, but it's so big and so fast."
The lesson for many counterfeiters has been that they have a better chance of getting away with it if they copy smaller brands like Foley & Corinna — even though Foley & Corinna, while popular with celebrities and fashion types, is not widely recognized as a status brand and its bags can be had for as little as $126 on the brand's own website.
"Once it's out there a lot, people won't even want the real one because then they're like, 'People are going to think it's fake,"' Corinna Sellinger said. "It takes the product away from the designer
In my opinion counterfeits will always plague America as long as there are high fashion items and products. This is why I always make sure the items I buy are at a retail store.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2012502070_knockoffs01.html?syndication=rss
Originally published Saturday, July 31, 2010 at 3:44 PM
Comments (9) E-mail article Print view Share
In tough economy, product knockoffs get even cheaper
In this economy, even counterfeiters are trading down. After years of knocking off luxury products like $2,800 Louis Vuitton ...
By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
The New York Times
Related
In this economy, even counterfeiters are trading down.
After years of knocking off luxury products like $2,800 Louis Vuitton handbags, criminals are discovering there is money to be made in faking the more ordinary — like $295 Kooba bags and $140 Ugg boots. In California, the authorities recently seized a shipment of counterfeit Angel Soft toilet paper.
The shift in the counterfeiting industry, which costs American businesses an estimated $200 billion a year, plays to recession-weary customers looking for down-market deals, the authorities say. And it has been fueled in part by factories sitting idle in China.
Almost 80 percent of the seized counterfeit goods in the United States last year were produced in China, where the downturn in legitimate exports during the recession left many factories looking for goods — in some cases, any goods — to produce.
"If there is demand, there will be supply," said John Spink, associate director of the Anti-Counterfeiting and Product Protection Program at Michigan State University. In China, he said, "It's all of a sudden them saying, 'We have low capacity. What can we make?"'
The answer is increasingly knockoffs of lesser-known brands, which are easy to sell on the Internet, can be priced higher than obvious fakes, and avoid the aggressive programs by retail companies, customs enforcement and the big luxury brands to protect their labels, officials say.
The results: Faux Samantha Thavasa bags for $113 and Ed Hardy hoodie sweatshirts for $82.50. And, bizarrely, imitations that are more expensive than the real ones: In 2007, Anya Hindmarch sold canvas totes that said "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" for $15. Now fakes are available on the Web for $99.
"If it's making money over here in the U.S., it's going to be reverse-engineered or made overseas," said Jonathan Erece, a trade-enforcement coordinator for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Long Beach, Calif. "It's like a cat-and-mouse game."
The traders in mid-price fakes are employing another new trick: By pricing the counterfeits close to retail prices — which they can do when the original product is not too expensive — they entice unsuspecting buyers.
Any savvy shopper, for example, knows a Louis Vuitton bag selling for $100 cannot be the real thing. But when NeimanMarcus.com, an authorized retailer for Kooba bags, sells them for $295, and a small website sells them for $190, a deal-hunting consumer could think she has scored a bargain. (She hasn't. The $190 bag is a fake.)
"If the price points are somewhat close, some consumers get duped into believing they're getting a real product," said Robert Barchiesi, president of the International AntiCounterfeiting Coalition, a trade group. "They might be looking for a bargain, but a bargain to buy real goods."
The counterfeiters are also lifting photos and text from legitimate websites, further fooling some shoppers.
"The consumer is blind as to the source of the product," said Leah Evert-Burks, director of brand protection for Ugg Australia's parent company, the Deckers Outdoor Corporation. "Counterfeit websites go up pretty easily, and counterfeiters will copy our stock photos, the text of our website, so it will look and feel like" the company site, she said.
While all of it is illegal, the authorities do not publish statistics on what brands' products are being counterfeited. But designers and trade experts said the down-market trend in counterfeiting became more noticeable over the last year, as counterfeiters got more inventive.
The field is big: The total value of counterfeit goods seized by U.S. customs officials increased by more than 25 percent each year from 2005 to 2008, using the government's fiscal calendar. In fiscal 2009, as imports overall dropped by 25 percent, the value of counterfeit products seized dropped by only 4 percent to $260.7 million.
The official statistics capture only a piece of the problem, companies and experts say, because so many counterfeiters market directly to customers on the Internet and many of those sales go undetected by the authorities.
"Online is much harder" to patrol and enforce, said Todd Kahn, general counsel for Coach, the handbag and accessories company.
That is particularly true for smaller brands, as Anna Corinna Sellinger, co-founder and creative director of the New York clothing and accessories company Foley & Corinna, learned.
A couple of years ago, she began checking out which Foley & Corinna items were selling on eBay. Her city tote, which now retails for $485, was a popular item, but on some listings "there was something off — it's a color I never did, or a leather I never did," she said.
As other sites proliferated, and Corinna Sellinger noticed more and more Internet fakes, she stopped looking altogether.
"It's just too frustrating," she said. "You can try to do something, but it's so big and so fast."
The lesson for many counterfeiters has been that they have a better chance of getting away with it if they copy smaller brands like Foley & Corinna — even though Foley & Corinna, while popular with celebrities and fashion types, is not widely recognized as a status brand and its bags can be had for as little as $126 on the brand's own website.
"Once it's out there a lot, people won't even want the real one because then they're like, 'People are going to think it's fake,"' Corinna Sellinger said. "It takes the product away from the designer
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