It's time to stop the retail blame game - government attempts to force retailers to avoid buying merchandise made in sweatshops - Column

Discount Store News, Dec 9, 1996 by Ken Rankin

How much responsibility do we expect retailers take for the products that they sell? Plenty! Particularly the big chains with the resources and expertise in place to be truly knowledgeable about the goods they choose to carry.

But are we asking too much from our retailers?

In the 19th century, about the only ground rule for retail industry responsibility was a Darwinistic mandate to offer consumers a good value for their money.

The ones who didn't went out of business, and the ones who did - people like Frank Woolworth and Sebastian Kresge - were often spectacularly successful.

To remain relevant in the marketplace of the 21st century, however, retailers are going to have to be a lot more than a mere efficient endpoint in the distribution chain. They're going to have to live up to their billing as the purchasing agents for the American public.

At minimum, retailers are going to have to take more direct responsibility for the safety of the products that they sell. With the exception of products like drugs, whose safety is regulated by the Federal government, retailers will and should be held accountable for helping to screen out potentially dangerous merchandise.

Tomorrow's consumers will also expect retailers to play a more active role in ensuring the quality and durability of the products they sell. Sending customers off to deal with manufacturers when they have a defective product just won't cut it.

But is there more that the public will likely ask retailers to take responsibility for? And is there a danger that we will be asking too much of retailing?

The answer to both questions is yes.

Increasingly, retailers are being asked to take political and social issues into consideration when deciding what merchandise to stock.

The environmentalists would like to encourage, if not coerce, retailers into carrying recycled products while discontinuing sales of less than environmentally friendly merchandise.

Organized labor would like the public to stop shopping at stores that don't carry the "Union Label," while animal rights activists expect retailers to police their suppliers for inhumane practices.

Other groups believe retailers should discontinue sales of merchandise from sources in countries with questionable records on civil rights or human rights issues.

Most recently, retailers have come under pressure from the Clinton Administration to make purchasing decisions based on the labor practices of their suppliers.

Failure to do so might well result in a retailer being publicly branded as a distributor of "sweatshop" merchandise.

The irony, of course, is that the people in Washington who are doing the branding are the same bureaucrats whose incompetent enforcement of federal wage-hour and immigration laws permitted the sweatshops to operate in the first place.

When we ask the retail industry to make up for the failures of government agencies to enforce their own rules and regulations, we're asking too much. And at the same time, we're unfairly driving up costs to consumers.