My thoughts on the Mac + Rodarte update

Most of you have probably seen (from good bloggers who write things in a decent amount of time) that Mac and Rodarte have announced new statements responding to the outrage their collection caused recently (and, in my opinion, rightly) across the 'blogosphere':

Mac have said:

'We understand that product names in the M·A·C Rodarte collection have offended our consumers and fans. This was never our intent and we are very sorry. We continue to listen carefully to the comments we have received and have the following plans to address concerns:

• We are committed to donating $100,000 to a non-profit organization that has a proven, successful track-record helping women in need and that can directly improve the lives of women in Juarez in a meaningful way.
• We are changing the product names in the M·A·C Rodarte collection.

As we have done in the past, please be assured that we will communicate details regarding our progress in this matter.'

Rodarte's statement:

'We recognize that the violence against women taking place in Juarez needs to be met with proactive action. We never intended to make light of this serious issue and we are truly sorry.
Helping to improve the conditions for women in Juarez is a priority for us and we are thankful for all the comments calling attention to the urgency of addressing this situation.'

My feelings?

Rodarte's statement is pretty pathetic in my opinion. They apologise and say they realise the situation needs action but are not ofering anything. They're not planning on doing anything and that is a huge shame. They say that helping the women of Juarez is a priority for them, but what have they EVER done to help before? Other than use them as inspiration and make money from that, for themselves? Their statement seems to be missing the point. They did wrong and should do something about it. instead they act almost as if they've done something great, thanking people for commenting on the situation, as if they brought it to our attention themselves.
They've completely lost any respect i had for them.

As for Mac's...Well... $100,000 is a big sum of money to most people. I imagine it could do a lot of good. However, I must say I'm disappointed in Mac again. This is a gigantic company who must make millions of dollars a year, and because of that the sum seems a bit paltry. Beauty Mouth wrote the following in her post on the subject:
'MAC's number 1 door in the UK turns over around £4.5 million a year. ONE outlet. £86538 a week. £12363 a day. £1236 a working hour.'

So one outlet makes £4.5 million in a year, that's over $7000000 and again this is ONE outlet out of, how many in the world? I imagine there are at least a hundred freestanding Mac stores, and then even more counters in department stores, and then online shopping. So when you take this into account $100000 really sems like nothing.
Also i'm a little suspicious to be honest. At first they announced they were going to donate an unspecified amount of the profits from the collection, then this was dropped and turned into a flat rate of $100000.
Now I don't know how much they were expecting to make from the collection. If the estimate total profit of the collection was $200000 then they would be donating 50%, which is pretty good. However if they were expecting to make $1000000 from the collection it would only be 10% which is not great at all.

I am glad they've changed the names, and the donation is nice, if not overly generous, but there's so much more Mac could have done and honestly i can't believe they would do something so insensitive and offensive in the first place. As i've said before i've had mixed thoughts about Mac before but this has really put me off them as a company. I am not going to boycott them, though they don't actually do much i'd want to buy at the moment, but my whole outlook on them has completely change. Before i would not have hesitated to recommend them, now i think i would feel quite dirty doing so.


Whatever your feelings on the matter are i would urge you to sign this petition. it only takes a minute. If you are disappointed like me then this will help. And if you didn't have any problem with the names and inspiration behind the collection then wouldn't you still rather buy a product and know all the profit is going to charity?  It only takes a minute and could do real good.