The jig's up. OK, not quite, but perhaps the writing is on the wall, at least for some of the more egregious examples of outsourced manufacturing. Check out HealthyToys.
It's a website that reveals the toxic chemicals used in manufacturing and packaging toys. It turns out that lots of dangerous stuff can escape detection, still meet some minimal allowable threshold, or simply not be included in the requirements of production or shipping.
If (or how) dangerous these chemicals might be is a matter for debate, but the site purports to share the details with any inquiring consumer.Remember the lead paint crisis for toymakers last holiday season? The response from the big brands was an enormous shrug 1) they really weren't responsible, 2) the blame went to outsourced factories, and 3) the culprits would be punished, and oversight improved.So the brands weren't responsible for the mistakes, or liable for their effects.
How, where, when, and by whom the toys are made is somehow beyond the definition of brand. The branding ideal always remains absolute and pure.Only now, would-be customers can hold the brand names accountable. And they can make purchase decisions based on information other than that provided by the marketers.This is a directionally huge change in how we approach brands.
The basic premise behind outsourcing is that it's either invisible or irrelevant to end-users, whether consumers or b2b customers. The technology exists to locate any type of production to any place it can be done most cheaply; it doesn't matter to people who are buying finished products based on the marketing and communications provided about brands
Yet we're seeing hints that those very "back office" qualities not only matter, but that there's no way to keep them secret (or distract people from them by making symbolic "socially responsible" gestures):Boeing ran into major production delays because it's actually far harder, and less reliable, to delegate production of things as simple as bolts to other manufacturers.
Dell lost lots of customers after it outsourced its previously local and laid-back, knowledgeable customer service to call centers in India (or wherever)Nike, and most mainstream apparel makers, have long fought a rear-guard action to protect their use of workers/working conditions that couldn't pass any code in the U.S.Let's face it: when it comes to outsourcing, we don't want to know how the sausage is made.
The only reason why production costs are lowest somewhere is because that somewhere scrimps on safety, pay, quality, or environmental protection. It's the only way the economics work. Efficiency is the comfortable code-word we use to describe what is otherwise a policy, despite every declaration of monitoring or concern, of exploiting inefficiencies in knowledge, reporting, and enforcement.The branding pretense has been that nobody cared, or that they couldn't find out.But when deliveries are delayed, service stinks, or products threaten to kill children, the back office gets brought to the front.
Web sites like HealthyToys help it happen. Imagine other sites, like wherestuffcomesfrom.com, that could tell you what the factories look like, how much they pollute. How about a tracking service that explains how much energy was wasted shipping, say, a pair of shoes from a factory in China, versus shipping a pair made a few miles from your home. Transparency doesn't represent the end of outsourcing.
The jig's not up; far from it. But maybe we're seeing the beginning of our awareness, as consumers, of how outsourcing affects our purchase decisions? And maybe it's a wake-up call to marketers who still believe that somehow it's separate from their brands?
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