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Designed, Made, Assembled, Manufactured, Regenerated

Advertising plastered around Shibuya for a Chinese/Vietnamese brand that is making a push into the sk8 footwear market.

How does our perception of a brand change when any consumer has instant access to trace a product back to the source of its manufacture? Going back to the person who hand-stitched the custom uppers to the vanilla lowers? How do the semantics of product creation change In a world of supply-chain transparency?

Are we there already? iPod's designed in Cupertino but assembled in China? What does it mean to be made somewhere? And for products with self healing properties will we start to see regenerated in? Or evolved from?

Writing from Shibuya, back of | June 11, 2007 | Permalink