Brand Post: Zuca Bags

This is a lesson on not getting attached to products before checking where they are made. Or that expensive things, nice things, well made products are also made in China. Customer service tells me their products are made by a "friend" they have in China. Well then. Here is to money saved. 

I still love the Zuca bags. They have many technical innovations which seem awesome. Sadly, I will not be purchasing one for an upcoming trip. 

I promise to have more cheerful posts one of these days, posting things that are *not* actually made in China. 

Brand Post: SimpleHuman

Simplehuman is a great company -- they make the prettiest trash cans and recycling cans ever. Sadly, a random assortment of their products is made in China. Which half? Who knows? Nothing is labeled or indicated anywhere on their website to indicate where their products are made. 

Customer Service reveals half their products are made in China and half in Taiwan. Toss-up as to which half is which. You need to ask for products individually -- by color.  This gorgeous trash can is made in Taiwan. I got myself one of those! Sadly, this pretty thing is made in China. Lose!

Travel guides

I love traveling. Sometimes alone and preferably without a tour guide. Which means I need tour books or travel guides. Now, there is this problem with travel guides. You cannot return them. So you need to look like a crazy person at the bookstore flipping through them. 

Here are things I know for sure:

Lonely Planet Kyoto, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Bahamas are printed in China. I was going to make the educated guess that *all* lonely planet guides were printed in China, but my Lonely Planet London was printed in Singapore. Now, That is the only volume I bought outside of the US. The publishing house might vary by country. So, check the inside cover?

Rough Guide Montreal and Japan are made in China. I have seen other Rough guides that were not, however. Rough guide buyers beware! The printing information is in an awkward location: between the end of the book and the maps and index. It took me a couple of tries to discover this.

Knopf Montreal Mapguide is not made in China. Hooray!

The Berlin InsideOut compass guide -- this most awesome thing, comes with a compass and a pen -- is produced in China. But it only says so in the price sticker. Everything else would indicate it was made in the UK. But no. Sad. A mapbook with a compass is pretty much the most useful thing ever made. 

If I travel more, I'll keep you updated. I seem to be out of luck in travel guides. 

On gifts

Being that the holiday season is coming up, I figured I'd say something on gifts. Gifts are great things! It allows us to get stuff from China guilt-free (just as long as you don't compile a wish list). Yay! Until your potential gift-givers find out you don't buy things from China. Then they stop buying you things made there. If you explain your reasoning to them, you might even *gasp* convert them to your way of thinking. There goes those great plans for getting nice things from China. See what happens when people agree with you?

Store Post: Crate and Barrel

So, Crate and Barrel has long been one of my favorite stores. Upscale, but not too upscale, found in every mall, very simple stylings and fantastic cookware implements. I have these sliding measuring spoon things from them which I adore to pieces. 

Sadly, I need to be very careful when buying from there from now on, since a good deal of their inventory is made in China. Be specially wary of their glassware. 

However, it is not all a loss. Their sheets, for example. They have Marimekko sheets. They are designed in Finland, and at least some of the designs are made in Pakistan. I bought some of those after asking customer service about it. Their labeling online is not good (the dratted imported tag), but their customer service will have an answer (within a couple of days), and their products in the physical store are well labeled. 

So this is a mixed review of Crate and Barrel. I'll keep patronizing there for now, with cautious optimism. 

A note when talking to customer service. I try not to be confrontational. I never ask: is this made in China? I ask: where is this made? I feel that is more neutral. 

Good things and Bad things

I always assumed that not buying things from China would make me spend more money. In fact, this is not quite true. In general, it has been a positive experiment, but it has its positives and negatives.

For example, I buy less things. I'm an impulsive shopper. But it is a lot harder to be impulsive as a shopper if you have a restriction on what you can buy. I check labels now, and if it is made in china, it is as if it is not for sale. So it cuts down a lot on impulsive purchases. Normally, if it is not something I need, I don't go searching for an alternate version of the product that is made outside of China. So in many respects I save money even if some of the things I buy are more expensive.

That said, just because it is expensive, doesn't mean it is not made in China. Lots of nice things are made in China. So you save in buying luxury items sometimes, too. Chronic offenders are Crate and Barrel and BCBG Max Azria. Sometimes you are better off going to Target or H&M. 

It also makes me less shy. When shopping in person, it is easy(ier) to check labels. Online, no so much. You start dreading the "imported" tag on online purchases. Imported from where? It never says. You email customer service. They take a while to reply. You call customer service. You need to ask for each product individually. It makes you eager to patronize your local stores and buy locally -- which is good for the environment to boot. 

There is a trick to getting things you want that are of dubious origin--buy used or refurbished. Someone else bought it from China, it outlived its usefulness, and now, you can rescue it from going to a landfill with all those other things made from China and buy it yourself. Refurbished products are a bit trickier, since sometimes they are sent back to the factory in China to be refurbished. Sometimes they are not. I'm still unclear how I feel about this, but it has been my only avenue for getting electronics at this point.

It is not without bad things, though. There are things you really, really want. Sometimes you do cave in, and you feel bad about it. Sometimes you don't, and you still feel bad about it. Sometimes things are labeled in such a way that there is no way to find out until you open the product, remove price stickers, or otherwise make you liable for the product. These things happen. Don't beat yourself up over it.

A difficult thing is books. Publishers are not consistent, travel guides are not returnable, the labeling is often on page 34 and sometimes books are covered in vinyl wrap. And I love books. This is a new problem I'm starting to tackle for myself. 

Start.

I've been haphazardly boycotting Chinese (PRC) products since January 2008, with mixed success. I'm getting better. My reasons are miscellaneous, and at some point I might elaborate on them, but not right now. The purpose of this blog is not to elaborate on the reasons one might want to boycott China in particular, but to provide a resource for those who do want to--what to look for, what products and stores are safe, and how to deal with unusual situations.  It is also meant to discuss the pitfalls and joys one encounters in trying to live around a personal boycott. 

I'm a firm believer in capitalism, and as such, I register that my dollar is my vote, and I'm trying to live in a way consistent to that. If nothing else, it is an interesting exercise.