WC Archive

http://www.sltrib.com/business/ci_3550747
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/29/overstock_stock_dip/
http://news.com.com/Fahrenheit+vs.+Fahrenhype/2100-1025_3-5400033.html

(For those of you who don't follow the links: Joseph points us to some stories indicating that Overstock is not a good corporate citizen for a variety of reasons.)

That's really unfortunate, and raises an interesting question: what do we do when a company that behaves in a generally bad way opts to do something arguably good?

I love the idea, dislike the source. This is as though Walmart started selling American made solar panels, I'd still be enriching a company that on the whole was a bad representation of a 'do good' company. While true, Overstock is not in the ballpark or league of Walmart it is still a bastion for lowest common denominator outlet-o-crap.

If the CEO wants to see Worldstock prosper from my wallet, spin off Worldstock into a stand alone entity, they already own the domain worldstock.com. I personally do not want to see nor will accept branding from Overstock and the funny thing is, I've never purchased from them nor had a personal bad experience - this is simply my protest against doing business with 800 pound gorilla's.

I'd never heard of Overstock before, but its operation does raise other interesting questions.

Is selling out the surplus consumer goods (which have already been made) at a discounted price to clear them out a worse result than allowing those goods to rot in a warehouse somewhere, or be dumped holus-bolus?

And if the discounted goods were able to be obtained by a NFP organisation for distrubution through charity to underpriveleged communities, are there additional social sustainability benefits that might follow?

I guess this follows on from the issue of a 'badly behaved' company being subverted to doing good things.....

more...

http://moorewatch.com/index.php/weblog/truth_for_troops/

So the idea of buying artisan-made crafts is, of course, appealing. But what do the environmentalists among us think of buying a shawl made in Lebanon, only to have it shipped halfway 'round the world? Do we sacrifice sustainability in order to buy from artisans on the other side of the globe? How do you decide which is the greater good?

Seems like a TreeHugger type consumer-focused post to me. We can't buy sustainability by consuming more (I know that's not what is being suggested here).

My response is to buy the most sustainable and ethical product that you can from the most sustainable and ethical supplier/distributer that you can, within reasonable limitations (personal judgement). But it can be hard to judge, perplexing, time-consuming, and, is voluntary action the solution? I voluntarily make considerable ethical/sustainable efforts myself and like to think that it makes a small difference (eg fair trade products) and helps to influence the broader public which in turn influences public policies which in turn will remove some of the need to make voluntary ethical acts.

Irma a shock to my way of thinking was realising that shipping something from the other side of the world by ship at sea may emit fewer greenhouse gases than shipping something by land (rail or truck) from a nation close to you or from a distant part of your own country. (ie shipping over sea is much more efficient than over land)

So unless you know the distances and methods by which the product was shipped within and between the countries of origin and purchase, then you can go crazy trying to figure that out. ("Hello, did you fly this from Africa or ship it by sea? Via which port?") I just try to buy local when I can, if it's clearly a local product (usually you can't tell). If it's something that probably comes from a developing country, I try to buy fair-trade (or organic, but fair-trade comes 1st).

This has been tried a thousand times. It doesn't work.
It keeps people in poverty by focusing on a cottage industry while glossing over the bigger structural problems of globalisation.

This does sound to me like a company attempting to profit on what seems to be a trend in niche/custom product. I'd rather there was no middleman, but I don't see a simple way around that. Question is: Which company would you trust?

Buy sustainable if you must. But try to save your dollars for direct investment in something with a long lasting sustainable impact. This year I bought Christmas presents through AGI for solar energy for the Lakota of Montana. I trust that it will do more good than some trinket from somewhere on the other side of the world.

Buy sustainable if you must. But try to save your dollars for direct investment in something with a long lasting sustainable impact. This year I bought Christmas presents through AGI for solar energy for the Lakota of Montana. I trust that it will do more good than some trinket from somewhere on the other side of the world.

As for the behavior of overstock.com, issues concerning selling short and alleged badmouthing of them by analysts are being decided in court. Here are more article from the Salt Lake Cty Tribune relating:

http://www.sltrib.com/search?breadcrumbs=&category=&offset=0&sortBy=startdate&similarTo=&similarType=find&runSearch=true&lastQuery=Overstock.com&query=Overstock.com&type=phrase

Ten Thousand Villages (tenthousandvillages.com) seems the better choice. A nonprofit chain of 160 stores, connected to the Mennonites. Overstock is rather sketchy.

Not familiar with worldstock. But Novica has been selling crafts for a while. Sounds like they have better credential.

http://www.novica.com/info/index.cfm?action=ourmission

See also Mercado Global (http://www.mercadoglobal.org) for a more traditional non-profit approach.

Of course another question raised is whether or not it is economically sustainable to have fundamentally commerical processes (the selling of handmade goods) mediated by non-profit organizations; maybe during the transition to a global economy it is the right idea, but the solution over the long term is not so obvious.

"This year I bought Christmas presents through AGI for solar energy for the Lakota of Montana."

Oh man. That's what I was hoping to give. I gave the recipient a choice and she chose something else. Probably something that will have a more direct and immediate impact, but I've been into solar cells since I was a kid. Next year, I'm asking for that one!

Let the buyer beware. Since the latest mantra of the MNC, and the business grad schools is the "triple bottom line": profit,social, and enviromental benefit as a business model for seeking opportunity and growth in markets at "the base of the pyramid", it's more important than ever to know the envirnmental and social track record of the MNC, or MNC endowed NGO. It's not uncommon to find direct links to MNC's with contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan, or to MNC's with abismal environmental histories.

My favourite example of this sort of thing is:

http://market.theworkingworld.org

They call it "true trade, fair trade with total transparency" which I like.

A percentage of all sales go to their common fund for the development of new and existing democratic workplaces...

http://www.labase.org/

I've been talking to them about selling their products in Europe (and have questioned myself about where shipping things from Argentina to the UK is really a good idea).

Like some of the post above point out though, if the products are shipped by sea (which most products still are) then I shouldn't worry too much.

I actually took the time to read the links posted by Joseph Willemssen, and I think the assertion that they show that Overstock.com is a bad corporate citizen is unfounded. To summarize: the first article refers to an ongoing court case having to do with Wall Street types who may or may not have been trash talking to drive the company's share price. The second article describes problems at the company, including many customer service snafus over the holidays, plus the CEO having a bit of a PR meltdown about, again, the share price. The third article describes how the company sold DVDs by a local film-maker critical of Michael Moore. In my book, none of this makes them a bad corporate citizen - I was expecting something about polluting or abusing their workers or ripping off their investors. This is not Exxon, not Wal-Mart, and not Enron.

As for Worldstock, it seems to have its heart in the right place. In the grand scheme of things, would you rather people bought tchotchkes made in a village where the artisan gets a bigger cut of the sale price, or ones made in a sweatshop in China? Patronizing Worldstock sends a message to the greater marketplace that you care about where things come from and the people who make them. If that's enough for you, shop away. Is it enough to change the world? No, but it's a start of something better.