Friday, November 29, 2013

SHAME on you TARGET

I sit and type this post on the eve of Black Friday .. in fact, just one hour from when the Big hand meets the stroke of midnight. Crowds, swelling in front of automatic glass doors, sensors scanning warm bodies just outside the entry ..but locked .. tick tock tick tock ..

One year it was an animal filled with beans (or were those tumbled plastic chips .. byproducts of China's injection molds??) Another year, talking-tickle-toys worth an elbow in the face for ... and now, a video game? A NEW phone !!!!

SoOoOoOoo much better than the last !!


Black Friday - what does that even mean? I asked myself this a while back .. Black? Haven't we demonized that color?? And weren't they trying to excite us? Not this time, it seems, we're brought right back into the corporate offices, and we talk their talk, calculated and cold. Do we care to know the history and etymology .. of any-thing we buy into? Black mold, Black lung, Black magic ... I think Princess-Pink Friday would've been a better fit - PINK, yes !! Or Snow White Friday ?? .. Bacon-wrapped Friday ???

We'll .. it's a business term. Black. Out of the Red, they'll say, and into the Black. When you're in the red, as a company, you haven't yet made your nut for the season. But once you're in the Black, that's party time. Profit time. You've bought (lives) Low and sold (stuff) High .. or.. slightly high(er) .. millions and millions of times, and into the RED !!

Yes, while the rest of the country sinks deeper into debt as we ride the hype-wave, buying gifts we can't afford for guilty people who do the same, until we crash into the rocks .. while texting on our new smartphone.

But that's not (really) what we're here to talk about ..

Let's talk about the China-Made ripoff candles that Target (hip, smiling, white-teeth Target) has on their shelves .. an original concept compliments of the who started a craft on the wheels of their - a renovated 1975 Winnebago.



Here's our story, and the magical birth of our antique bottle-shaped beeswax candles ; )

(short bio video below)



was brought to you by two lovers who wanted to create and offer beauty and originality to this world, but like many others, had little time and less money to explore their curiosities ... so, we did what many people through history have done: shed the weights and chains - left things in the alley, sold stuff, boxed things, and distilled life to just the essential oils (bed, shower ((aka. a heated tea kettle)) ice chest, book shelf & music.) .. and it all fit snugly inside our automotive ark,.

With this new freedom of time & far away from our insane LA rents (we quietly lived on city streets), we kicked the tires of our creative selves .. rusty & misfiring as they might have been from years of neglect. I hand wrote volumes in legal pads)

While exploring a local beach, plucking sea glass from the sand and harvesting purple seaweed (we'd incorporated dried and pressed sea life to the panoramas) .. juwels found a bottle. An antique bottle half buried in sand, and .

We were the first to mold candles in the shapes of antique bottles, and people loVed it !! We cooked delicious pots of beeswax on the tiny stove in our rolling home, got a little press.. and before long, we wereacross the scorching Arizona desert to a beautiful little mountain town where we're setup our very own candle studio ; )

Now you know where we found this idea - our gift from the mermaids - and how we willed ourselves into The (our) American Dream ... and now let's talk about how Target found it. Well ... it's the same as above, that is, without all the work, sacrifice and faith ... without the serendipity, inspiration, loVe and excitement. They just saw it, wanted it, and took it away ... far, far away .. to Hong Kong in fact : (



ONE.) If you're going to rip us off ... why not employ some of our brothers and sisters right here in the States to do the pouring? Do we not send enough jobs and money overseas?? ((Let's play a game .. go into Target and flip over 100 items and try to find 10 from America .. but choose wisely because the odds are not in your favor !!)



TWO. ) Use Beeswax. Real Beeswax. Clean burning, honey-luscious Beeswax. Don't dye oily chemical paraffin wax sickly yellow and scent "HONEY" just to look even more like our product and philosophy ... we don't want anyone tricked and tempted by our original shapes into taking home your little pillar of poison.. Just so you can sell cheap, and make your millions, pennies at a time, the world over ; (



THREE. ) How many other independent artists have you knocked off and produced overseas? Do you have scouts surfing Etsy ... buying samples for your dirty "development" meetings? Are boxes sent to you hand stamped with LOVE ?? "Look, honey, we just sold something on etsy !!"



(Juwels - "Ah .. they can't even fit the stickers right !!" but don't blame the factory workers, they probably have many other things on their minds .. like the 10,000 other pieces they have to make in the day so prices can stay LOW LOW, and so all else can seem expensive by that measure ..; (



Buy Less)

You have the Power ! ! !

loVe, lOve,

-p&j
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