Hide and seek

I’m noticing that some of the goods I look at seem to be trying to hide the country of origin information. I’ve seen the “Made in China” hidden on a tag buried deep inside a glove (to find the tag, the packaging had to be pulled apart), printed right in the middle of the square where the price sticker will be placed, printed in light grey ink on a white part of the packaging, and generally in the smallest sized font I’m able to read without a microscope.

I’m calling foul. There are plenty of folks out there who don’t care if it’s made in China and think I’m insane for doing what I’m doing.

Why hide it? I think you should put “MADE IN CHINA” in such a large font that no one will miss it. That way I don’t waste my time pulling apart packaging only to call you an asshole when I do find the label, and the people who don’t care will continue not to care.

Everybody wins!

And be aware please – I don’t post here every day so I sometimes don’t check the comment moderation queue as quickly as you’d like me to. If you left a comment and it’s been in the moderation queue for a bit, don’t panic. I’ve probably just gotten busy and I’ll approve it eventually.

The wine glass debacle

A couple of weeks ago, I broke my last wine glass.

Now, when I’m home by myself I’m certainly not above drinking wine out of a coffee cup but if there are witnesses around I want to at least pretend that I’m semi-civilized so I went out to buy new wine glasses.

Since all my wine glasses seem to snap at the stem, I decided that I wanted some of the stemless glasses.

Now, I’m not going shopping for the high-end stuff. I don’t need (and can’t afford to) drop a month’s salary on eight glasses (four red, four white), so I started out by going to Crate and Barrel and was disappointed when I saw that all of the lower-priced stemless glasses were made in China. Scratch that – ALL the stemless glasses I saw there were made in China.

I checked a few other stores and the glasses were either out of my price range (for the really nice Austrian crystal ones) or made in China.

Then, as a last ditch effort, I checked Pier One Imports. Now, I normally don’t go into Pier One – mainly because it smells really funny in there and I can’t seem to get that smell out of my hair, but also because damn near everything they sell is made in China…

Except that they had stemless wine glasses that were made in the USA for $1.99 each.

Yay! I bought 12 and not eight because they’re a bit light and I’m betting I’ll break one in a matter of days.

There’s been no shopping in my world as of late.

Since the WGA strike has put me out of work for an extended period of time, and the unemployment insurance people here in California seem to have adopted a “stall them until they’re homeless and then they won’t be our problem” tactic, I haven’t been doing any shopping for anything other than food lately.

Since most of my food shopping is done at the local farmer’s market because the food’s fresher and it’s cheaper than the supermarket, I’ve certainly not bought anything from China recently.

Maybe I’ll have more to post about when I start working again.

Shoe adventures

One area that I never thought about before was shoes – I’ve got hard to fit feet, so shopping for any kind of shoe is nothing short of a nightmare.

Now, I need a nice pair of semi dressy walking shoes. I went first to REI, where just about everything in the store was made in China.

We’ve been brainwashed to think that it’s okay that the cheap stuff is manufactured in China – if you want stuff made in a western country you have to pay more, right?

Wrong – even the expensive brands that supposedly have a social conscious are making stuff in China. Columbia’s entire line is Chinese, which doesn’t surprise me. But Mountain Hardware? North Face? Ecco? These are really high end brands and they’re manufacturing in China and still charging and arm and a leg.

But I digress – Not one shoe at REI was made anywhere besides China. I tried department stores, specialty stores, discounters and finally, in a fit of desperation went to the mall and wandered into the Walking Company – who carry a large selection of mostly Chinese made shoes, but they do stock some brands that are made elsewhere.

First I’ve seen. I bought a pair of Joseph Seibels that are actually made in Europe. Sure, they were $120 but since it doesn’t look like I’m going to be buying shoes again any time soon, why not?

I don’t know what I’m going to do when my current pair of work shoes wears out. They’re Merrell, and of course are made in China.

A coat, a coat – my kingdom for a coat.

Over Thanksgiving, some friends and I are going to France.

It seems like the perfect time of year – less crowded (my memories of Paris in the summer are hoards of tourists and exasperated locals) and cheaper mainly, but all of us also need a vacation. I haven’t had one in over 10 years, and since we’re not likely to be working at that time, it seemed perfect.

The only problem is the weather in Paris – it’s cold. Far colder than the mild winters we have here in Southern California, so I needed a coat. Not the light jackets that I usually wear because it almost never gets colder than 40 degrees F here in LA, but a nice heavy coat.

I decided on a pea coat, as it’s classic and looks nice, so the next time I go somewhere cold where I have to look nice (looking schlubby in Paris is not advised), I’ll already have one.

Also, since pea coats are fashionable this year, I figured I’d have an easy time finding a nice one.

Wrong. Well, partially wrong. I found a number of them in all price ranges, but every single one was made in China. I tried boutiques and department stores and came up empty handed. Even the expensive designer ones (which were out of my price range anyhow) were made in China.

As a last ditch effort, I went to the Army Surplus store, hoping I could find a used one, since pea coats are naval in origin.

This is where I got the biggest surprise I’ve had in a while. Racks and racks of wool pea coats – some even with heavy quilted zip-out linings – all made in the USA by Sterlingwear, and they were some of the nicer pea coats I’ve seen, too.

They were all a classic cut, come in short, regular and tall, and had black plastic buttons instead of the brass ones I remember on older pea coats (which was fine by me – I actually like the darker buttons better), and they cost $150.00 (the ones in the stores were at least double that amount) for the black coats.

The store I went to had some discontinued colors – a grey and a deep burgundy – that were discounted to $75.00, so I bought the burgundy one. I bought a regular length although I really needed a tall, but they didn’t have my size in tall, which I suppose is one of the hazards of shopping at surplus stores. The coat’s a bit short, but it still looks really nice and it’s warm AND it’s not made in China.

Hooray!

On a related rant, when did production of ALL wool products move to China? I’m trying to find a wool sweater (since I don’t have one) and I simply can’t find anything wool that’s not made there. Even the sweaters that are European and American wool are woven in China.

Guess it’s back to the surplus store for me.

China teams up with a furball to defeat me.

My cat isn’t really much for toys – except a toy called the Cat Track. Basically, this is a plastic donut with a ball trapped inside of it that the cat can play with.

She loves the toy, and plays with it a lot, and the one she’s had since she was a kitten has taken a surprising amount of abuse, but finally it broke, and I was unable to glue it back together (and have it stick, of course – I could glue it back together and have it fall apart immediately, but that kind of defeats the purpose), so I went out to get another.

Three guesses where the cat track is made and the first two don’t count.

To the best of my knowledge, there’s only one company that even makes the damn things and they only manufacture in China.

Dammit.

I heaved a sigh in Petco, purchased my Chinese made Cat Track and went home.

At least the cat’s happy right now.

Work interferes with my shopping experiment

When I start working really long hours, I don’t have time to do anything. They provide food for us at work, so I don’t even have to go to the grocery store.

All I have to do is do the laundry on weekends, which means that I very infrequently go to Target to buy detergent (the country of origin isn’t listed on the box, btw).

The only thing I currently have to report is that Febreeze is made in the USA.

Soon, work will slow down and I’ll have to get some stuff for a planned trip to France over Thanksgiving – since I live in Southern California, I don’t have any winter clothes, so shopping should be nerve wracking at best.

I’m off to the gym to work out.

I’m both dismayed and yet somehow relieved

After working all week and being unable to shop for anything (hence the lack of posting), I finally got a day off and went to one of Los Angeles’ upscale shopping areas during a block sale – all the nice stores on the block put out racks of items, some of which were reduced down to numbers that even I could afford.

In the past, this street’s block party has resulted in really horrible overspending on my part, but not this year. Damn near everything was made in China, which I found strange.

I’ve been programmed to accept that inexpensive stuff was all from China and if I wanted low-priced items, then that was just the way it was and if I wanted something manufactured in the west I was going to have to shell out, but I’m finding that even the fairly expensive lines ($300 dresses, $700 coats) are being manufactured in China.

When I saw a really nice pair of shoes which had been marked down to under $100 (and amazingly were in my size), I picked them up, turned them over and sure enough – “Fabrique au Chine”. I put them back with a sigh and when the salesperson asked why I didn’t want them (offering to find other colors or sizes in the back) I told her that it was because they were made in China and she snapped “Who cares? They’re cheap!”

I also found quite a lot of items with no country of manufacture listed anywhere on the item or in the store’s information. I don’t know if that means it’s safe to buy it or if it’s not safe.

So, I left the trendy shopping street – my only purchase being a cup of coffee.

I think I might be a nervous wreck now.

And I’ve hardly started.

Target, once my best friend, has now become a minefield of cleverly hidden labels with the outcome always the same.

Made in China.

More than once, I’ve walked out of the store muttering, “Jesus H. Christ, is there anything in here that’s not made in China?”

Damn you, Target. I used to love you.

The upside to all this is that although the things I’m buying are far more expensive, I’m buying much less stuff than usual (impulse purchases are down dramatically – usually because I find the item’s label, sigh, and then put it back), so I’m actually spending less money.

Luckily, tomorrow is a holiday so I’m probably going to pack a lunch and spend the day at the beach (wearing my French sunglasses), which will fortunately not necessitate any shopping on my part.

Happy Labor Day, everyone.

Ugg responds to my email

I emailed Ugg, asking them if they manufacture goods in China, and here’s the response I got back:

We have experienced tremendous growth in UGG Australia footwear, especially in the Classic Collection. The demand has outnumbered the capabilities of both the Australian and New Zealand factories.

Product demand, business growth, and the consistency of manufacturing in Asia have all been determining factors as to why we have moved many of the collections’ productions to China.

Though our boots have been manufactured in China for several years, they continue to be made of authentic Grade A sheepskin from Australia and New Zealand. UGG Australia is part of a United States corporation, yet it was founded by an Australian surfer who brought Australian surfing boots to the United States.

The UGG Australia name is a registered trademark and refers to the design origin, not the location of the company or manufacturer. It is also meant to help distinguish UGG Australia boots from generic and counterfeit brands.

We follow strict criteria for positive working environments. Our membership in Co-op America assures that we are meeting standards of workers’ rights – please see our listing at http://www.coopamerica.org/pubs/greenpages/detail.cfm?key=18377. We also regularly contribute to Amnesty International to ensure the proper treatment of people around the world.

If you are interested in more information, please review our philanthropy statement at http://deckers.com/about/philanthropy.aspx

Please also visit the following websites for additional environmental information:

http://knowmore.org/index.php/Deckers_Outdoor_Corporation

http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_partner.asp?155823

Thank you again. Have a nice day!

If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to call our customer service center.

Regards,

April Knapp

Customer Service Representative

So they do manufacture in China.

Since I don’t really like Uggs (or the sheepskin trim they put on just about everything they make), this doesn’t really affect me, but it is good to know.