I have always found big business, that becomes a form of oppression, distasteful at the least. Just Like Sony TV's and Nike shoes before them, G Loomis first put out the top engineering and quality control procedures in place. Great rods. Then, as with Nike and Sony also, came the multi million/billon dollar ad campaigns and overhyped image creation that their products were so superior that you were really left hurting if you didn't dish out more than you could afford in order to have them. This American way is a proven formula. It works on a majority of consumers. Then when the reputation and sales bases are intact and sustaining the sales growth, they reduce manufacturing costs which causes a less superior product and warranty backing! Then they are making a killing with a grotesk profit margin. It puts guys like Phil Knight, owner of Nike, up on a hill (just a ways above my older rich bros house) in a house/compound only a little smaller than Bill Gates' Lk. Wash. pad. The swoosh dude buys a new Turbo Porche every other year to augment his BMW's and Mercedes' (and pulls back his U. of O. philanthropy when the student union votes to endorse an advocacy group that exposes Nike's 3rd world slave labor ways- excuse the vent). Nike and Sony have long since dropped out of the best quality among their competitors, but continue to thrive at the top of the corporate world's profitablity by process of past rep and current huge ad budgets. Ugly! Seems GLoomis is headed that way? Ironic too, because they will not catch you one more fish than the excellant Lami's that cost so much less. I guess Andre Aggasi is right about too many people when he says "image is everything". That's what I tried to expose before. - Steve

[This message has been edited by Reel Truth (edited 07-08-2000).]