Get your hands off our image. That’s the message Australia is broadcasting to the world with a highly publicised crackdown on an ugg boot wholesaler.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has hit apparel company Ozwear with a $25,000 fine for claiming on its website it was “100% Aussie owned” and that its “Classic Ugg” range was manufactured with “the best materials available in Australia”.
The Chinese-made items had attached to them a cardboard swing-tag in the shape of Australia, in green and gold, claiming “this exclusive premium label is uniquely Australian-owned brand for authentic Australian Ugg boots”.
While the products did say on them that they were made in China, that was not good enough for the consumer watchdog.
“Ozwear’s conduct is unacceptable,” ACCC Deputy Chair Mick Keogh said. “Under the Australian Consumer Law, businesses are prohibited from making claims that create a false impression about products being made in Australia … Businesses are warned that making misleading claims or representations about a product’s country of origin will attract ACCC scrutiny and enforcement action.”
But the great ugg bust of 2018 is about more than just a wool-lined slipper so dramatically comfortable you are perpetually tempted to wear it out of the house. This is about Australia’s springboard into the economy of the future.
“Country of origin representations can be a powerful marketing tool for businesses,” Mr Keogh pointed out. “Many consumers are willing to pay extra for Australian made products.”
Australia’s manufacturing industry is having a resurgence. It is largely to do with the “Australian origin” marketing that gives our food and farm products their fresh and clean image.
Just as “made in Italy” conveys style when you find it on the tag of a garment, so “made in Australia” conveys quality, cleanliness and safety when you find it on the back of a food product. That matters enormously in China, where consumers are suspicious — sometimes justifiably — of local product quality.
Food and fibre
All those Chinese tourists stuffing their suitcases with baby milk powder are just the most visible part of the phenomenon — our food and fibre is in hot demand right now.
But unlike previous times when we have ridden on the sheep’s back, Australia is now asked to transform the natural bounty of our land. Consumers want a value-added product. Not just bulk Australian cheese made into things locally. They want assurances this stuff is really Australian.
The rise in local food and fibre manufacturing has been substantial. After steadily losing employment for six years from 2011 to 2017, the manufacturing industry has in the last year added all those lost jobs back, and more. Around 80,000 new jobs have been added, including some in manufacturing related to the mining and construction industries too.
Companies, like the Tasmanian milk powder and baby food manufacturer Bellamy’s Organic, are making out like bandits on the back of our national image. They have a plan to raise revenue to half a billion dollars in the next few years, which will inevitably flow through to farmers and the communities that support those farmers.
We’re not making so many generic socks and cars and more. We make milk powders, cheese, and thousands of other types of manufactured food.
I wish I could be more specific here, but the ABS categories are set up for that previous era — it has lots of categories for different bulk products (e.g. “Cereal meals and flours excl. groats and meal of wheat and flour of wheat or of meslin”) but not many for manufactured food. Thus, the “edible products not elsewhere specified” column is absolutely stuffed with valuable exports.
Increasingly, so is footwear, women’s clothes, meat products. These industries look set to make a real contribution to Australia’s economy, if they can leverage our national image. And that’s why we’re putting the slipper into vendors of dodgy foreign moccasins.
Ugg Boots are the most disgusting item of clothing ever to be worn. They look like inside out sheep when worn, and they flop over, stink and look filthy and disgusting whenever I see some misguided bogan wearing them out on the town.
Let China have the disgusting things. Grosby makes a very fine slipper. Wear them instead.
I was not an Ugg slipper person until I got some ankle high ones and found them to be very warm for those with cold feet. Mine don’t stink and are not dirty.
I must say that I was very unimpressed with my experience in trying to ensure that I bought local Ugg boots – was thinking of the US company that tried to patent the name.
I visited an Ugg boot shop after googling where Ugg boots were sold in Melbourne and went to a shop in the Emporium (supposed to be very flash shops but many aren’t). The shop gave the impression that all the wool goods sold there was Australian-made, all sporting the tag with the green and gold logo as did my Ugg slippers .
When I got home, I found a very small tag hidden in the lambswool inside which said ‘made in China’. I should have guessed that it was a Chinese goods shop as the sales staff were Chinese – and not local Chinese.
So good on the ACCC. It was definitely misleading advertising.
I’ve worn lambs wool moccies (only at home) for years now because the Grosbies and similar have artificial fiber linings that stink strongly after a short time. I’ve never gone the full Uggs but the streets are full of horrible shoes especially major brand runners with specially selected clashing multi colours. Uggs are barely noticeable by comparison.
Actually making things, especially quality food and apparel, is great news for Australia and I’d be happy to see more government support for genuine exporting companies plus local produce.
That Tasmania isn’t the Mecca of clean green food exports, high employment and high wages can only be traced to appalling govt stupidity and reliance on forestry for too long.
There could be so many wins here.
Is “Deckers” Chinese?
$25,000 fine? I’m sure they’re quaking in their ugg boots. Even if they change their labeling for the Australian market, I’m sure Ozwear’s overseas labelling will continue to spruik and imply Australian made.
Have the Shaky Isles inhabitants not had something to say about ugg provenance, other than “Kiaora Mate“?
On a broader about origins, in the old days – wayyy back in the Stone Age 90s – Customs had a specific & well staffed department which was solely concerned with country of origin and ensuring that imports were clearly and accurately labelled.
Nowadays even food items in the supamarts often do NOT indicated source countries or even foreign origin and labelling has been so vitiated that we see “made from local & imported product” which can mean that the water or salt is OZ or the really infuriating one “made with less than 10% local produce” which is triumphalism at its worst – boasting about being dodgy.