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Stately pleasure domes
Mary Malmros typed
(Oci-One Kanubi) writes: What else has changed? I used to think of the Nantahala Outdoor Center as the paddlers' Mecca. Now I think of it as Walmart On the River, though many of the employess still are kind and generous boaters who are helpful to any boater of any skill level. But how 'bout the acquisition of Dagger and Perception by Watermark? Dagger and NOC were founded as labors of love by boaters. Now NOC seems to me to be an unfeeling profit-driven enterprise, and Dagger, founded as a canoe maker, has stopped making open canoes. I don't think they LOST money on open-boat manufacture; the profit margin was just not enough for them. Meanwhile, over at Perception, the real boaters have bailed out and started Liquid Logic. Let's be honest, Richard. ANY business is a profit-driven enterprise. It has to make some profit in order to survive. If pursuit of profit per se makes a company soulless, then a lot of us are going to hell. Let's be more honest, Mary. Small cottage industries that are founded for love of the product can persist indefinitely providing their founders with a marginal profit. Large businesses that care nothing for the product and the customers can persist only so long as they show their stockholders a competitive return on investment. The founders of Dagger, and many of the employees, were probably pretty well content to make a middle-class living, and were willing to make canoes which brought them a 4%[1] return as well as kayaks that brought a 11.5%[1] return, because they loved making canoes and loved having some of the best canoes on the market. Then Watermark offered big bucks to buy them out. I don't blame the owners for selling, but I am sorry they did. Now that Watermark has to answer to offshore investors, they had to cut the 4%[1] products from their inventory, because those investors just don't care; they have no personal pride invested in the production of a good whitewater canoe. Yes, pursuit of profit for pure profit's sake DOES make a company soulless, and a lot of us ARE going to hell. It is the need to show shareholders a short-term profit that has so many American companies turning out shoddy products and making bad business decisions, cooking the books, shutting down less-profitable but still-viable divisions, buying a President to avoid environmental regulation and taxes, and all the corporate malfeasance that yer reading about in yer morning paper. Profit is necessary in a capitalist system[2], and capitalism is important -- possibly necessary -- as a strategy for getting the most creativity and effort from people. But profit tied to pride-in-workmanship or pride-in-product has far more social value than pure profit for its own sake. [1] I'm just making these numbers up; the only thing I know for sure is that the margin on kayaks is greater than the margin on canoes. [2] It is arguable whether we are the wealthiest nation in the world as a result of barely-fettered capitalism, or as a result of the coincidental juxtaposition, several hundred years ago, of a literate near-industrial population with a vast array of thitherto unexploited resources. -Richard, His Kanubic Travesty -- ================================================== ==================== Richard Hopley, Winston-Salem, NC, USA rhopley[at]earthlink[dot]net 1-301-775-0471 Nothing really matters except Boats, Sex, and Rock'n'Roll. rhopley[at]wfubmc[dot]edu 1-336-713-5077 OK, OK; computer programming for scientific research also matters. ================================================== ==================== |
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