The Discrace of Nike!

Nike now lets you personalize your shoes by submitting a word or phrase which they will stitch onto your shoes, under the swoosh. So Jonah Peretti filled out the form and sent them $50 to stitch “SWEATSHOP” onto his shoes.
Here’s the responses he got...

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From: “Personalize, NIKE iD” To: “’Jonah H. Peretti’”
Subject:
RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000
Your NIKE iD order was cancelled for one or more of the following reasons:
1) Your Personal iD contains another party’s trademark or other intellectual property
2) Your Personal iD contains the name of an athlete or team we do not have the legal right to use
3) Your Personal iD was left blank. Did you not want any personalization?
4) Your Personal iD contains profanity or inappropriate slang, and besides, your mother would slap us.
If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product with a new
personalization please visit us again at www.nike.com
Thank you, NIKE iD

From: “Jonah H. Peretti” To: “Personalize, NIKE iD”
Subject: RE:
My NIKE iD order o16468000

Greetings,
My order was cancelled but my personal NIKE iD does not violate any of the criteria outlined in your message. The Personal iD on my custom ZOOM XC USA running shoes was the word “sweatshop.”
Sweatshop is not:
another’s party’s trademark,
the name of an athlete,
blank, or
profanity.

I chose the iD because I wanted to remember the toil and labour of the children that made my shoes. Could you please ship them to me immediately.
Thanks and Happy New Year, Jonah Peretti
From: “Personalize, NIKE iD” To: “’Jonah H. Peretti’”
Subject:
RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000

Dear NIKE iD Customer,
Your NIKE iD order was cancelled because the iD you have chosen
contains, as stated in the previous e-mail correspondence,
“inappropriate slang”. If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD
product with a new personalisation please visit us again at nike.com
Thank you, NIKE iD

From: “Jonah H. Peretti” To: “Personalize, NIKE iD”
Subject: RE:
Your NIKE iD order o16468000

Dear NIKE iD,
Thank you for your quick response to my inquiry about my custom ZOOM XC USA running shoes. Although I commend you for your prompt customer service, I disagree with the claim that my personal iD was inappropriate slang. After consulting Webster’s Dictionary, I discovered that “sweatshop” is in fact part of standard English, and not slang. The word means: “a shop or factory in which workers are employed for long hours at low wages and under unhealthy conditions” and its origin dates from 1892. So my personal iD does meet the criteria detailed in your first email.
Your web site advertises that the NIKE iD program is “about freedom to choose and freedom to express who you are.” I share Nike’s love of freedom and personal expression. The site also says that “If you want it done right...build it yourself.” I was thrilled to be able to build my own shoes, and my personal iD was offered as a small token of appreciation for the sweatshop workers poised to help me realise my vision. I hope that you will value my freedom of expression and reconsider your decision to reject my order.
Thank you, Jonah Peretti
From: “Personalize, NIKE iD” To: “’Jonah H. Peretti’”
Subject:
RE: Your NIKE iD order o16468000

Dear NIKE iD Customer,
Regarding the rules for personalization it also states on the NIKE iD web site that “Nike reserves the right to cancel any personal iD up to 24 hours after it has been submitted”. In addition, it further explains:
“While we honour most personal iDs, we cannot honour every one. Some may be (or contain) other’s trademarks, or the names of certain professional sports teams, athletes or celebrities that Nike does not have the right to use.
Others may contain material that we consider inappropriate or simply do not
want to place on our products. Unfortunately, at times this obliges us to
decline personal
iDs that may otherwise seem unobjectionable. In any event, we will let you
know if we decline your personal iD, and we will offer you the chance to
submit another.” With these rules in mind, we cannot accept your order as
submitted. If you wish to reorder your NIKE iD product with a new
personalization please visit us again at www.nike.com
Thank you, NIKE iD
From: “Jonah H. Peretti” To: “Personalize, NIKE iD”
Subject: RE:
Your NIKE iD order o16468000

Dear NIKE iD,
Thank you for the time and energy you have spent on my request.
I have decided to order the shoes with a different iD, but I would like to
make one small request. Could you please send me a colour snapshot of the
ten-year-old Vietnamese girl who makes my shoes? Thanks,
Jonah Peretti


As one forwarder writes:
... this will now go round the world much farther and faster than any of the
adverts they paid Michael Jordan more than the entire wage packet of all
their sweatshop workers in the world to do... I normally avoid making a plea
to pass on these things, but this time I say: JUST DO IT

i know, I posted this a few weeks back.

Did you Behemoth, Many Apologies. I got it sent to me today. Shall I close the Tread?

not at all - its always good to make sure as many people as possible discover things like this.

well done - keep up the good work.

PS - you dont need to close threads - they eventually become obsolete when people stop posting to them. only the most recently used are shown in the default lists.

Fair enough!

I think I posted it too a few days ago :)

No, I do not agree at all. If you want to blame Nike for their labor policy, the best thing you can do is not to buy their models any more, and not to submit them $ 50 for a label that costs them a mere cents.

I disagree,

Recently, a group of anti-Nike/anti-sweatshop people came to my school giving presentations on how life was down there and the whole situation with this thing. I agree with them, when they say, that almost everything that you buy is going to come from a sweatshop. Nike doesnt manufacture their shoes, they are not a manufacturing company, they buy the shoes from someone else, who's only job is to make Nikes. Nike, Adidas, Gap, and Old Navy are only a few that come from sweatshops, they are the big ones. If you need a nice pair of shoes, go get some Nikes. But the real way to protest is if you or you get someone in a high place (college/pro/anything athlete) to say put tape over their Nike check's and write 'sweatshops' or something like that on it, it sends a much larger message.

Adios!

I know next to nothing about conditions in third world countries where so called sweatshops exist, so I have questions, not comments on this issue.

Do any of you know if these people have alternatives to the sweatshops? Might there be unhappy unintended consequences if they got closed down?

Does Nike run these factories or contract with them? What alternatives might Nike use if bad PR causes them to stop using current sources?

I do know that history has dealt unfairly with the seatshops of early capitalism. They existed when productivity was extremely low by modern standards, and the alternatives were worse than the sweatshop.

Heres a little insight of what i know...

1) Nike only contracts these manufacturing companies

2) The people are so low on the poverty scale and dont really have schooling so they dont really have any alternatives. If they were to close down then all these people would lose their jobs and probably go into farming, which at least provides them with food, bt not really enough money for anything else.

Without documentation or a citation, I find it hard to believe some of the information posted to this thread.

I agree its hard to beilve most of this stuff... a lot of Nike haters may start those chain letters Ex. Adidas, Reeboc (i think i seplt it wrong), and others.