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Psyched for Kader, and pleasantly surprised by Carl. The work Adidas puts into their edits, travel, etc shows that they seem to care a lot more about the culture. I would throw NB into that too. Nike has had some good edits, but it's all to Johnny Wilson's credit.
Not sure if I can buy Ishod's shoe like I was planning on after hearing all this terrible shit. Might have to keep running Tyshawn's.
A company who shamelessly sponsors any scumbag, abuser and rapist that will make them a buck. They make the dreaded crail look saintly.
The slave labor and little kids growing up with deformed fingers from working around the clock in child labor camps.
Culture killing skateboarding slowly then dumping it cos it not profitable.
How anyone can fuck with nike is beyond me.
real question, that i feel like i never actually see answered; what shoes are you skating right now? from my research, there's not a single skate company that doesn't use foreign manufacturing. nike, adidas, new balance, vans, etnies, emerica, state. they all use foreign made products. why does nike get shit on for using slave labor and state gets a pass? because state is more skater owned?
You're using "foreign manufacturing" and "slave labour" interchangeably here, and there's important distinctions between those two. For example, Last Resort is being manufactured in Vietnam, by Vietnamese adults. Nike on the other hand has been caught multiple times for large scale child labour. I'm not trying to come at you, but it shows a bit of Western bias to immediately assume that "made in [Asian country]" immediately means slave labour.
that's true, and you're totally right, i was using them interchangeably and that's not fair.
maybe it's more accurate to ask why slave labor is bad when its nike, but when kader gets on adidas, no one is talking about how adidas does the same thing.
https://medium.com/modefica-global/from-apple-to-adidas-brands-use-ethnic-minority-slave-labor-in-china-cd3ce41864ac
i understand not supporting nike because you think they're bad for skating, but i feel like we should be applying the same lens to other companies too.
Nike are by every metric the worst.
As mentioned most of the companies mentioned used foreign labor. Some do use slave conditions but it's still nowhere in the magnitude of Nike.
Lesser of several evils and all that.
Those atrocities aside.....
They completely fucked up skateboarding. I've said it time and time again on here and got kook'd hard everytime. But the proof is in the pudding now.
Just want to add to this by saying I think it’s also a matter of scale that brings people attention more to one company corporation than another. Also, Nikes are made in Vietnam too.
This, Nike or Adidas don't won the factories or work in only 1 country, those factories are huge and work for all the big corps most of the times. I've been to Vietnam a few times and for example in one of the factories I've visited you have the Adidas office in between the Nike and Reebok office... Huge fucking factories with over 20000 employees. I got told that they had an even bigger one from the same group in Indonesia, like twice the size. When the shifts end it's like a sea of people going home, it's seriously mental. Conditions wise, I've seen the full production line and I didn't see anything wrong happening.
it looked like any other factory I've visited in Europe, just a lot warmed and moist (because Vietnam is like that), lots of fans and water bottles, and actually quite automated too. People work 8h shifts with lunch break and that's it. Of course it's a shitty job, but Factory work it's a shitty job everywhere else in the world. And no, no underaged kids (I wish I had 1$ for each time people ask me that).
Also, actually Chinese factories are usually a bit more expensive to produce than Vietnam for example, they have more knowledge/experience in the shoe making business and their labor price is steeper.
I've said this before here, but those big corps are more than cautious with the whole slave/child labor than ever, so they keep the factories under eye and regulated, even more after all the 90's scandals when no one really knew what was going on overseas. Now in this day and age, they are in the eyes of the world, and their reputation is stained already so they really try to keep their hands clean. I think the hardest thing to handle is actually the supply chain. Like, you can control the main factory, but they also work with other suppliers that produce parts for them, that's where the line gets blurry and you start loosing track of how or in what conditions they were made. Not sure how most Corps deal with that tbh...
(here's a good video that talks about that issue:
)
But my point is, the big corps have a lot more resources to produce in factories that respect their policies, and smaller brands are left to work with factories that aren't as experienced and can do smaller quantities. Those factories aren't up to the standards of the big giants and I'm pretty sure they aren't as supervised as the big ones... So if you think that buying a Soletech or State, or wtvr other smaller brand means a more ethically made product, you're most likely wrong.
Topic: Kader on adidas confirmed (Read 11082 times)