I’m moving to Antwerp..
They don’t have the “flavor of the day” mega marketed handbag in every line. They rarely advertise. The don’t throw their money at celebrity catwalk shows. They make a good product and a good profit.
(Great article in today’s WWD)

Dividends are better: they are based on what you can skim off the top of a company’s actual revenues and are only worth something if you actually keep the stock. So the payoff for the stockholder is in keeping the company viable long-term.

A dividend is a company’s way of say, “we can’t think of anything better to do with this money than give it back to our shareholders.” That’s fine for some, but other investors crave higher potential profits (and are willing to accept the inherent risk). They want the company to re-invest profits into new growth. High dividend producing companies may offer more stable returns over the years, but the price is a lower overall rate of return to shareholders. I’m not sure that’s better overall.

Factoring in the long-term cost of non-renewable resources would be an even better way… if we could figure out how to do it.

(Non-fashion-related illustration: Right now the price of cod only reflects the financial output of whoever caught it. Cod has been fished to commercial extinction. This is a direct result of competition and a short-sighted way of calculating profit. If you know there are trawlers out there who are fishing the cod to extinction, you had better put your own trawler on the water so you can fish them to extinction first. If the cod are going to be extinct anyway, and the profits are going to go to somebody, it might as well be to you, right?)

I assume you meant “renewable” when you said “non renewable.”

This is actually an example of tragedy of the commons. The solution is straightforward – auction off the right to fish cod to the highest bidder.

The asset owner now has long term incentive to maximize the value of the investment. The maximum value is achieved through allowing cod to be fished year in and year out and sold.

The government gets cash which it can use to offset high taxes on the population (haha!), the consumer gets cod at a price that reflects reality in perpetuity, and the cod isn’t forced to extinction.

The perceived greed factor shown by ABC is just another episode from a large corporation to milk revenue from an area of which many feel they have no right to be in.

Why not?

I’m really not trying to be dense – I’m just trying to understand the reasoning behind why they shouldn’t be allowed to be in this particular industry.

Dividends are better: they are based on what you can skim off the top of a company’s actual revenues and are only worth something if you actually keep the stock. So the payoff for the stockholder is in keeping the company viable long-term.

Factoring in the long-term cost of non-renewable resources would be an even better way… if we could figure out how to do it.

(Non-fashion-related illustration: Right now the price of cod only reflects the financial output of whoever caught it. Cod has been fished to commercial extinction. This is a direct result of competition and a short-sighted way of calculating profit. If you know there are trawlers out there who are fishing the cod to extinction, you had better put your own trawler on the water so you can fish them to extinction first. If the cod are going to be extinct anyway, and the profits are going to go to somebody, it might as well be to you, right?)

I’m absolutely not against profit. I happen to be for it: otherwise I wouldn’t be interested in this forum for entrepreneurs. It’s just that profits are only one form of good and they are secured within an overall context. The context can be manipulated by different forces in different ways. To go back to the (non-fashion-related) example of milk, changing the regulatory context *allowed* consumers to vote with their dollars. Now they can choose certified or pasteurised; organic, filtered or dirt-cheap; plain or calcium-fortified; skim, 1%, 2% or fattening. They know that whatever they choose it’s going to be safe to drink. They can go for the cheapest milk they can find: it’s going to be safe. If you don’t know if it’s going to be safe, you might hesitate to buy the cheap stuff. You might only give your kids milk when you go out to the country and can get it directly from farmers you know personally. And guess what – dairy producers are still making profits. (Well, dairy farmers might argue. But this is a fashion forum, not an agricultural one, so I’ll stop there.)

Similar cost/benefit problems arise with all aspects of textile production; it’s just that comparing costs and benefits gets way more complicated and completely beyond my scope.

Like I said, figuring out how this could be done gets to be a pretty baroque exercise, but not doing it at all leads to other problems. So we muddle along and we argue, which is exactly what we need to do.

I disagree. We are not talking t-shirts and souvenir items that all shows have had for years. As I mentioned in my earlier post, they have partnered with a company, ( perhaps improperly identified as a fulfillment company )and are making all the clothing styles worn onscreen for sale. That in my opinion, is getting in on the game. I am sure they aren’t providing this “portal” for free. A hefty licensing fee or a fat percentage of the sale motivates them to do so. Shameless cash grab.
I think why many people had such a reaction to this little bit was simple. The perceived greed factor shown by ABC is just another episode from a large corporation to milk revenue from an area of which many feel they have no right to be in. This is way more than selling “Fonzie” or “Sit on it” t-shirts.
Quick question to Miracle. Do you retail any items or brands featured on Desparate Housewives ?

What I think is disappointing is that the general population of America can be led around like sheep.
Which brings us back to the original topic..
Corporate mass marketing.

US population is closing in on 300 million. That’s a lot of sheep. Of course, I’m not sure that “doesn’t buy and like what *I* think that they should buy and like” is the dictionary definition of sheep.

Marketing dollars follow those sheep, they don’t lead them around.

As a corporate employee I can say with certainty that working for an organisation run by people working for stock options, people who are interested primarily in having the stock value go up and down as much as possible so that they can redeem their options based on “profit” (the difference between the lowest price the stock has had in the last X years and the highest price it has had)… sucks. “Sucks” as in “sucking chest wound.” The company itself is not built with attention to making long-term sense, just in temporarily building enough stock value that someone can sell it for a profit before they bail.

Yes, it sucks to work for bad management.

Yes, stock options provide great moral hazard to make stupid decisions. (FWIW, stock options gained in popularity at least in part because of idiotic populist government regulation and bizarre accounting treatment.)

But, other than profits, how should they be measuring results?