you should always think before patronizing an importer

The following article is taken in part from Sporting Goods Business on line publication.

"REI, celebrating its 80th year, reported sales of $2.62 billion in 2017, a gain of 2.3 percent from $2.56 million in 2016. The co-op also welcomed nearly 1 million new members and reinvested nearly 70 percent of profits into outdoor communities in 2017.

“As a co-op, we are a different kind of company,” said REI CEO Jerry Stritzke in a statement. “Our founders were bold enough to think about doing business differently, which is why we hold ourselves accountable to a ‘quadruple bottom line’: measuring not just how we do as a business, but how we drive impact for our employees, our members and society.”

In 2017, nearly 70 percent of its profits went right back to the outdoor community, supporting employee retirement, helping fund trail work, returning dividends to its members and supporting nonprofits that get people into the outdoors.

REI also launched new Product Sustainability Standards that apply to each of the more than 1,000 brands sold at the co-op. The standards mark a major step forward in sustainability for the outdoor and retail industries, and make it easier for millions of outdoor enthusiasts to find and choose more sustainable products, contributing to the future health of the outdoors."

The following are my comments!

What rei is not saying is how much of what they sell is made in Asia, probably mostly China. As far as I could find they get two women’s T shirts and one men’s T shirt from an American source. They also get food products and a few hard goods items from American suppliers. But the more than 1000 brands are made in Asia.

Their mantra just like the rest of the industry is to get as much product made at the cheapest prices in Asia to sell for the greatest margin of profit which is then paid to their Asian suppliers, versus getting product made in the USA which would mean American workers would be benefiting. The way this company and so many more do things these days are without regard for what is best for the USA population. If rei is making profits of the magnitude they offer it is because American citizens are buying their products.

The outdoor industry is very concerned about government interference with tariffs but I do not believe it will make a difference. Of course if some of the tariffs land on textile products the importers will just work at making them even cheaper that they are getting made now.

As I wrote in the last article about offering to work with any of the companies out there that get sleeping bags made in Asia they have all turned me down. One of them was rei. They asked for a bag several years ago on a memo billing basis. I sent it to them and after about two months having not heard from the buyer I called accounting and asked if they would either pay the bill or return the bag. The response was from (the a/p person) “I have to ask the buyer”, who happened to be in China what to do. The next day she called and said he wants me to pay you for the bag. They have had the bag for several years and have still not been able to duplicate it or have even tried. Or maybe the buyer is himself using it. The reality is in my opinion that the companies like rei who hang their hats on imported product just do not care about their domestic customers now or have they for a very long time.

Patronizing companies like rei means the buyer of what they sell is getting a raw deal, poor quality non-performing products, but we have been a throwaway society for a very long time so this is nothing new.

My advice is to research companies that actually produce product in the USA.