Thoughts on Pre and Post Tariff Luxury Goods Prices from China

Now that Chinese manufacturers have gone ahead and exposed how luxury brands post a 90% markup on top of their products, and offer the public a chance to buy the same products directly from the factory at cost, I’ve been thinking a lot how about the repercussions and I’m listing here some of my thoughts:

High street locations – There are locations around cities where people hunt for these things. They are very posh, very nice areas like BGC or Makati, they attract high end restaurants, have lots of human traffic and charge rent by the millions of pesos. If the top brands are exposed to have less value, the market may think twice, sales may go down, shops will close and the glitter of high street get tarnished. Jobs will surely be affected and the local economy around these as well.

The rich and pretentious – Truly moneyed people will see a 150% markup as a better opportunity to flaunt their wealth. Nothing says you’re rich more than buying a bag everyone knows is now thousands of times more expensive after the tariffs. It’s important though that the brands make a POST TARIFF version of their products to distinguish it from the PRE TARIFF models, which would be cheaper. Brand vloggers and their kind who know these things will make content to make sure everyone knows, making the people who lust after these things even more envious, achieving their goal.

The poor and pretentious – The ones who have had to take out mortgages to buy these will truly suffer. Now, none of their friends and relatives at Sunday church are going to be impressed with their pre tariff bags because they’re considered a scam. You will look like a sucker, and worse they can’t afford the post tariff models. They’re going to have to find new ways to gain the respect they’re trying to buy. It truly sucks to be poor.

The quality conscious – These people will gain the most. The video I reference in this image is of the Chinese manufacturer explaining where they source the leather (Germany, France, Italy), the stainless steel (will never tarnish or rust), the glue, the lining, the stitching, the workmanship is all world class, all top notch. You will be hard put to find a better bag, and it is possibly the best most well made, most high quality bag you may ever own, now available to you at less than a tenth of the cost after its branded.

The timing – Obviously the Chinese government instructed these manufacturers to make these videos, which is the only explanation why so many of them, the makers of Nike, Adidas, Ugg, etc. were published almost at the same time. I’m still wondering about the pros and cons of this to their economy, the manufacturers themselves and the global market as a whole.

May be an image of 1 person, money, phone and text that says 'Findrelatedcontent Find related content senbag/TT sen SEISMIK 14 APRIL 2025 38,00 38,000USD USD Situasi US Dan China Makin Tegang, Pembekal Mula Exposed Harga Barangan Mewah US Diperbuat Dari China will cost you'

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Tanim Bala Was A Successful Ruse to Paint PNoy Admin As Inept

I just wanted to get this off my chest.

I remember tanim bala years ago. The press and socmed would be literally screaming everyday on how incompetent PNoy’s admin was over NAIA staff placing bullets into luggage to extort tourists. I also remember the incredible traffic and how complaints would be amplified by the thousandfold, almost like shouting into a microphone so they could share how incompetent they thought PNoy was.

As much as I could empathize I could see however that the problems were clearly local. Tanim Bala was a NAIA problem, and as such should be resolved by NAIA authorities. Edsa traffic was an Edsa problem, not even a nationwide problem, and was therefore up to whoever was managing Edsa or the city as a whole. In fact it was clearly because people were buying so many cars as they had more money.

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January 2014

I don’t have anything planned to say, I just wanted to blog. Right now it’s Sunday and the wife and boy are at her parent’s house where all the relatives are as well. I will be joining them later in the afternoon or when I am summoned whichever comes first.

I wanted to say how happy I am at how things are at the moment. Of course everything can theoretically be better, but that’s just negativity talking. For sure though things can get worse, I’ve been there often enough to know that to be true.

It’s hard not to gush as a first time Dad would at Ace’s progression these past months. He’ll be 8 months this 15th and he is as round and cute as ever with the added ability of now being more interactive with those around him. He is just a step shy from starting to crawl after which he will eventually walk and then run, an event his months older cousin is starting to show as well. The minutes I spend with him urging him to crawl at our other empty condo with play tiles for this purpose, or just walking around the swimming pool make me happy and content. He has filled our lives with happiness just by being around and when I look at him I marvel not only at him but also at that amazing fact.

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What’s Going On With Me

Yup, I’m breaking month long blog silence to write what’s up. Not that there’s anything earthshaking, just felt like it. So here goes.

  • I’m using Blogo, a Mac based (naks) blog writing tool that helps make updating blog(s) easier. It works vis xmlrpc.php which both wordpress and drupal has, so it’s a great fit for me. Got this via jen and it’s the first time I’m trying it, so am hoping it’ll work out the box.
  • I’m very good with the Mac now, which is a 3 year old iBook G4 running 10.4.11 (yes I know what those things mean now). I’ve learned all the important shortcut keys and figured out pretty much how to get around quickly without the mouse (I’ve always disliked mice, esp. trackpads). So two major observations: OneI love the fact running, using and installing things is almost exactly like a Linux distro (albeit a very very good and polished one), and Two the idea that this is ‘easy to use and understand’ or at least easier than Windows is lost on me. I’ve encountered and fixed some technical issues in the few weeks I’ve owned this thing that I’m sure would’ve made a typical user cry in frustration.

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Why I Hate Flash

Just a quick note on why I hate Flash, for my reference whenever I get into an (occasionally heated) discussion on why I.. well, hate Flash:

  • Nice looking graphics get old quickly anyway – After seeing the graphics load, no matter how fancy, it becomes a pain to watch it load again – and again – and again, everytime you go back to the website. I don’t care how pretty it is. Unless you have the memory of a goldfish, after the first ooh and ahh you’re likely sated and ready to move on.
  • It’s a heavy download – This is fairly obvious. That’s why Flash designers create all sorts of fancy loading images and hour glass / hour clocks to entertain you whilst you waste away precious moments of your life waiting for the $*#$! site to load. As far as I’m concerned, everytime you put a loader in front of a website visitor there is a 30% to 50% chance he’s gonna lose interest and go elsewhere. That alone, to me, is unacceptable.

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Burn After Reading Movie Review

I finally got to watch Burn After Reading. One of the reasons why I hate Twilight so much is that I suspect BAR was shown for only a week in the theatres to make way for it, aside of course from the fact that its cheesy drivel, and probably pales in comparison to Frank Langela’s original Dracula from waaay back. But then again I haven’t watched it so I know not from where I speak. I doubt I ever will however, as the mere need to compare the two does not weigh enough on me to subject myself to what, from all angles, looks like idiocy.

At any rate back to BAR. Here we have the Coen brothers doing what they do best. Investigating the downward spiral of seemingly ridiculous yet absolutely real characters some of which, as in the case of Frances McDormand‘s Linda Litzke, reminds me terribly of someone I know. A woman so blinded by a perceived notion of what she should be and the kind of lifestyle she should have that she neglects the here and now. The result is an emotional wreck and what appears as the start of a bigger one, pending planned cosmetic surgery she feels will solve her problems.

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Very Drupal Post

The fact I seldom write on my own blog has caused me to actually forget the password. Fortunately I have a weird habit(?) of being able to remember every password (and even combination lock number) I’ve ever used since childhood and so I went through them one by one till I got in. I’m sure that’s very impressive to somebody out there so I’m just saying it.

I’ve worked all day on MomEx and finally got some semblance of the Yahoo! Answers like system I’ve been saying I’m gonna implement for such a long time. Only thing I didn’t get done was to put a voting system for the comments so that the person who posted the question (or the people) can vote which answer is best. I tried using the vote up or down module which can implement voting on nodes and comments. I can turn off voting on the nodes which I don’t need, but voting on comments applies to all content types and not just the question content type I created. That sucks because again, I only want voting on comments for the questions, not comments on, say, the blog entries.

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I Am Writing This Post Because It’s Raining Outside

.. and therefore, a brownout will ensue afterwards. That is how it is in our village each time. Strangely enough it happens after a big downpour, when everything seems to have settled down. First, it rains cats and dogs, then suddenly you hear a large explosion but from very far away. See, there’s a transformer thingamajing near the entrance of the village, and after a downpour the thing ‘explodes’ in a way that I might imagine dynamite would. It’s one of those things that when you hear, sounds like a big deal, but because its far away, you might miss if you’re busy doing something else.

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