Ethical Chic (eBook)

Company X is an ideal progressive company. Its products have dramatically challenged conventional thinking while helping people from cerebral palsy patients to schoolkids in Africa to antigovernment protestors in Iran, Tunisia, and Egypt. Its cofounder, a vegetarian, was married in a Buddhist ceremony in Yosemite National Park. Its website posts detailed information about its carbon emissions, moreover, it was the first in its industry to eliminate the most common toxic ingredients. And it has done all this while competing against one of the biggest, most hated companies on Earth. Cutting-edge, creative people wouldn&rsquo,t think of using anyone else&rsquo,s products.

Company Y, on the other hand, is a terrible company for progressives. Its nonunion employees historically labored long hours at the whim of a micromanaging chief executive who changed his mind at the last minute and made impossible demands. Overseas, it uses Chinese sweatshops so dreadful that a dozen workers have committed suicide. It has been slow on environmental issues, acting only after intense prodding by socially responsible mutual funds and a big public campaign from Greenpeace. Actually, it&rsquo,s hard to know anything about this company because it&rsquo,s so secretive that its press people don&rsquo,t return phone calls.

Of course, Company X and Company Y are the same company. The name: Apple Inc.

In this age of consumer activism, pinpoint marketing, and unlimited and immediate information, we want the impossible: products and producers that will assure us that we are fashionable, and that don&rsquo,t pollute, harm animals, or contain weird chemicals, that run on alternative energy, pay their workers good salaries, recycle their scraps, use natural ingredients, buy from local suppliers, donate generously to charity, donate in particular to their neighborhoods, and don&rsquo,t throw their weight around by lobbying. (Or maybe they should lobby for the right causes?) Why should we pay good money for something that will make us look nerdy, or that will poison the Earth? We don&rsquo,t think we&rsquo,re being overly demanding. All we&rsquo,re asking for are the kinds of policies we try to follow in our own daily lives, and if we can manage to recycle and avoid animal products, then certainly big companies, with all their clout, can do likewise.

Hard as it is to be so many things to so many consumers, a handful of companies and products&mdash,like Apple, Ben & Jerry&rsquo,s ice cream, Converse sneakers, and the grocery store chain Trader Joe&rsquo,s&mdash,seem to have hit that magic bull&rsquo,s-eye, at least for a time. Almost no matter what they do, they maintain an image of being cool, fun, and innovative and, at the same time, an equally strong image as green, politically progressive, and ethical.

As a result, their customers are fiercely loyal. At Macworld, the annual conference for users and vendors of Apple products, held in San Francisco in 2010, I met fans who had traveled at their own expense from as far away as Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan just to meet kindred souls and to ooh and ahh over the newest add-ons. And mind you, this was a gathering without the magical presence of Apple&rsquo,s legendary cofounder, Steve Jobs. Meanwhile, Naomi A. Gardberg, an assistant professor at the City University of New York&rsquo,s Zicklin School of Business, has friends who will drive thirty miles to get to Trader Joe&rsquo,s.

Even during the 2008&ndash,2009 downturn and the weak recovery afterward, BusinessWeek magazine noted in amazement that stressed-out, debt-ridden, mortgage-foreclosed consumers...