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I read with disgust the attempt to Boycott Borsalino, a company that manufactures fine quality hats. What ever happened to free trade and competition?Lets face it, Borsalino is the Lexus of hats. If you cant afford a Lexus,you buy a car you can afford. One does not attempt to bancrupt a company that manufactures suberb hats because you cant afford their prices. There are inexpensive hats that may be of lesser quality that you can purchase. Borsalino is not bound by your terms of market value. They are in it for the money and if you cant afford it, look else where.
Part of free trade is people freely deciding to pressure companies into acting certain ways.
Borsalino is certainly not “bound” by my terms, but neither am I “bound” by their terms.
They are in it for the money, and I am in it for the value. If I think I can get more value by pressuring them in any way, that is fair game.
You sound like a communist.
All companies are in it for the money. That’s how capitalism works. It isn’t like their is a “Ministry of black hats” or a “Joint rabbinical committee on man’s hats” comandeering factories and giving exclusive contracts to manufacturers. Someone seems to think there is a clause in the Shulhan Arukh requiring purchased of Borsalino’s products rather than someone else’s.
If Borsalino is overpriced, other companies can (and do) offer competing products.
In a capitalist system, it isn’t a “boycott” if consumer look elsewhere.
If you can’t afford it, your boycott doesn’t affect them at all.
maskim.
It is impossible to boycott something because you can’t afford it. You can only boycott something you would otherwise buy.
.But boycotting because you cant afford it, sure sounds Communistic to me.
That is free market. People acting freely in self interest to further their interests.
You are confusing private action with government action, with confusing results.
This boycott is one of the more moronic efforts. Maybe it comes from the prevailing sense of entitlement felt in this country, or a total lack of understanding of what a boycott is. No one should feel that he or she is entitled to a product and therefore should be made affordable.
So it turns out, from reading this thread, that if you support boycotting Borsalino, you’re a communist, and if you’re against boycotting Borsalino, you’re also a communist.
I think I’ll remain neutral.
got my Chicago Blackhawk hat – its a lot cheaper than the Borsalino one and it works just fine.
If you remain neutral you’re a double communist.
Ok, so I’m both for and against it.
Buy a Chinese knockoff and brand it Borsalino. No one will know the difference of what you’re wearing after having paid $25 for the hat. And if it only last four months, $75 per year (i.e. replacing it three times a year) for what looks like a Borsalini is still considerably cheaper than a real McCoy.
They don’t look the same, and you can’t get them for $25.
Maybe get a Paul Young hat.
Only slight exaggeration, but the point remains. Their are many non-Borsalino fedora’s that are virtually indistinguishable to the eye from an actual Borsalino and yet cost a fraction of the price. Even given a lower quality and higher replacement time-frame, the cost savings are significant.
This boycott was initiated by kollel yungerleit in Israel and is strongly supported by their Roshei Yeshiva. I’m surprised that their opinion (da’as torah) has not been given any weight on this thread.
Lior, Are you saying it’s ok to ” Buy a Chinese knockoff and brand it Borsalino “
old man: They are not using the word “boycott” correctly. Switching to a cheaper brand is not a boycott. It’s called “shopping around.”
If for example, they were refusing to wear Borsalinos and switching to a more expensive hat that would be perhaps a correct use of boycott since it clearly didn’t have an economic motivation. The fact the some kollel yungerleit aren’t aware that there is no halchic requirement to wear Borsalino hats is amusing at best.
borsalino makes the best hats but charges unfair prices for them. as a yeshiva bochur i know that not wearing a borsalino puts you in a lower class and 250 dollars for any hat is unreasonable
Can you walk into a shul and point out anyone who is wearing a non-Borsalino black fedora shaped and colored as any Borsalino?
Akuperma: Accepted. They did not use the word boycott, of course. The word they used is “cherem”.
Ivdu, you really believe that? Uch em vay, is that what it takes to distinguish class among frum people. Prices are not unfair if you can afford the product. You need to grow up and develop some character, and then this trivial matter won’t mean a thing to you. Anyone who will just you on the brand of hat you wear is not worth associating with.
You need to grow up and develop some character, and then this trivial matter won’t mean a thing to you.
Okay, but until then?
Also, does it cost Borsalino more to manufacture their hats than it does other, cheaper, companies? Are they ripping us off (which is their right), or do they need to charge more? The difference is the effect of a boycott: will it lower prices, or put a company out of business (or at least have them stop producing these hats)? Or, for that matter, raise prices?
This is not a boycott. This is a very belated financially responsible choice.
Maybe he needs a lesson that it’s just gashmius and he should expend more of is energy on spiritual matters. I often wonder how yeshiva bochurim can bring themselves to spend so much money on clothes, or even care about it enough to be prompted to contribute to this thread
This is not a boycott. This is a very belated financially responsible choice.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head.
I often wonder how yeshiva bochurim can bring themselves to spend so much money on clothes, or even care about it enough to be prompted to contribute to this thread
Because they’re human beings?
human beings! They aren’t told to minimize the importance of gashmius? It figures, then, when they look for shiddiuchim and they want to learn in kollel they value highly those who can support a lifestyle he is accustomed to.
The ones who don’t want to learn in kollel don’t care about gashmius?
probably, but you would htink those who want to learn would be on a higher madraiga.
probably,
Probably what?
but you would htink those who want to learn would be on a higher madraiga.
Do you mean that they should be totally ruchniusdik beings? They’re not. We should all strive to minimize gashmius.
Im boycotting Porsche. What chutspah to charge more than 800k for the 918 Spyder. I’m going to buy a Kia instead. That will show them.
flatbusher: They are on a higher madreiga. But most are not high enough that they care about no gashmius.
APY, did you come to a common decision with your peer group? Did you used to buy Porsches?
It doesnt matter what we do or did. It is the chutspa on their part. How dare they charge a price we dont like.
Well, it does matter in terms of your analogy, and in terms of the motivation.
If there’s anger, then maybe you’re right. That would be misplaced. I’m looking at this as a communal decision not to buy expensive hats, including people who can afford them, k’dei shelo l’vayesh mi she’ein lo.
The idea that a product is being overcharged for is an entirely legitimate complaint that enforceable halacha recognizes under Ona’a.
Only if the same product is available for less. This is not the same product, and halachically, there’s no problem if a Borsalino costs 100 X the price of a different brand hat.
So it is your contention that if Borsalino (assuming it is under the jurisdiction of halacha) were to tomorrow raise prices from today’s $275 a hat to $575 for it’s lowest-cost hat, there are no Ona’a issues with such a price raise?
Yes
For the purposes of Ona’a, what makes you certain that a Borsalino is considered as not being the same product as a competitive brand of comparable quality?
There’s no other hat, to my knowledge, that is of comparable quality. Regardless, the brand name alone is enough to be considered a different product.
What is your source that for the purposes of Ona’a a different brand name is sufficient to be considered a different product from a comparable competitive product?
No source needed. The fact that people are willing to pay more for a brand name, and would feel cheated if they payed for a brand name but received a different name or a generic, tells you that it’s not the same.
People illogically pay more for a brand name of the same quality as a non-brand name all the time. That they willingly pay more doesn’t tell you that it isn’t the same. Indeed, sometimes a factory sells the same product to different companies that each white label it and sell it at greatly different prices. Even some automobiles from different manufacturers, priced differently, are actually made by one of them and sold by the other under its own brand and pricing. Many of the Kirkland Signature (to take a prominent but far from only example) you buy in Costco are in fact national brands that Costco white labeled and sells for considerably less (with the agreement they won’t reveal which actual brand name manufacturer produced it.)
I think there is a difference between being totally ruchniyos and realizing that if you can’t afford a certain product, you just buy one you can afford. In your personal life, don’t you make decisions based on what you can afford rather than complain that the manufacturer charges too much? If there is a market that is willing to pay the higher price, so there is no incentive for the manufacturer to lower the price. If business falls off because they are outpricing themselves, either they will lower the price or go out of business. I can’t believe all the time that is being wasted on this market issue. Let he who wants the better product go out an earn the money to buy it, or live without it.
Lior, if I pay for Blue Diamond almonds and they send me Kirkland Signature almonds, you’d better believe I have the right to a refund.
Flatbusher, okay, you’re making a new argument. You think instead of boycotting, they should just change their purchasing habits. Well, that’s what they’re doing, but with the added feature of having most yeshiva bochurim change their purchasing habits, so that wearing the inferior hat won’t make someone feel poorly about it. If you’ll argue that nobody should feel bad about which hat they wear, I’ll remind you that they’re human beings, and are subject to peer pressure.
Can people generally eyeball the hats on people’s heads and point out which are and which aren’t Borsalinos, even when both are the same style?
Otherwise, is the “peer pressure” spoken of referring to what yenem’s sees on the yeshiva hat rack when spying yenem’s label?
Yes, and, nevertheless, yes.
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