As we all know, I love controversy. What can I say, it’s thrilling! And I recently received a comment from a George Sanders (whynovica@hotmail.com) that sparks up some controversy! The comment is as follows:

This is now really going too far! Novica will throw down to you an inexpensive $50 gift certificate so you can blog, or market and talk nicely, about them. The sad reality is that novica is just one of those greedy US companies that use a cheap selling concept to rake it in. This comes at the expense of poor, simple and uneducated artisans whom they squeeze to death, demanding extremely lower prices, consignment, asking for items and then rejecting them without any explanation. The only ones who can afford such business are large traders. Not mentioning the lack of transparency in regards of child labor and sustainability. They were featured in some Wake-Up VDO. And that’s what we people need to do: WAKE UP! If you want to participate, if you want to help deprived people and artisans, then look around and purchase from fair trade companies that really help artisans, or simply micro-loan.

So I want to clear the air on a number of things. First off this comment was received on my blog post about the Novica Giveaway I am running. Secondly, I didn’t approve it to be published in the comments section of the giveaway. My policy is usually one that I print any comment that is not of hate speech. Clearly the above does not constitute as hate speech. So why didn’t I allow for it to be published? Simple, I wanted to keep the comment thread clear for entrants only. I haven’t even responded to some of the comments that have been left…..and I have really wanted to. I have to keep track of these entries and clogging up the stream with personal opinions and idle chatter isn’t going to work out too well. So I want to keep it clean. I don’t want to come across as someone who is trying to keep from “the truth being known”. No, this definetly deserves a post of it’s own.

Next, I want to clarify that I received $150, not $50. I chose to split the money into two ($75) gift codes so that I could give away something to a lucky reader. I like to share things that way. It may be something inexpensive to the company or not. I don’t work on their finance team and can’t really say what their marketing budget is.

As for the issue of “so you can blog, or market and talk nicely, about them”. There may be some truth to that. You see when I work with a company and it turns out to be a not so nice adventure, I contact them first before I say anything. I have a duty to my readers to be honest but I also have a duty to the companies to say “Hey, you suck” before I post it over the internet. Contacting bloggers for review is a method of advertising for their company. It’s not like companies purposely set out to put out bad TV commercials for their product, they don’t necessarily want bad advertising online. The absolute truth is that bloggers DO have a lot of impact on a product. Women used to gather around the kitchen table talking about ring around the collar and how to get marker off the walls. Now we blog about it. Same impact, new method. And it’s smart for a company to work with us to find out how to improve a product when we tell them it sucks or to get the advertising by offering something free. It’s no different than attending a trade show and getting to try something out. Or the swag bags companies hand out at various conferences, conventions, and celeb-loaded events.

When it comes to products I make a point to LOOK for a con. I never set out to portray anything in an absolute positive light. My post about Novica is about my experience and I did post about something that was less than positive. And in past reviews of other products I have done the same. I stand by my post 100% and wouldn’t change it for the world. Because they wanted me to post about my experience and I have done so.

Now about this, “one of those greedy US companies“? Well here is a news flash. I am one of those greedy capitalists. As long as a company is working within our laws, then I support their right to conduct business. That doesn’t mean I like every single business currently running in the US. If I don’t like a company I keep it simple, I don’t shop there. Some companies are considered wonderful and have rubbed me the wrong way due to a poor experience with their customer service. Some companies don’t have practices that I care much for, like say Walmart. I don’t spend my time cruising the net looking for blogs about Walmart to inform people why I think they shouldn’t shop there. They have the right to spend their money where they can……and some people can only afford Walmart.

“If you want to participate, if you want to help deprived people and artisans, then look around and purchase from fair trade companies that really help artisans, or simply micro-loan.” Well let’s be flat out honest here, I never said in my post that I was trying to help deprived people and artisans. It’s not that I wouldn’t but when I checked out the website, what appealed to me was the ability to speak directly to artisans. I never went the “poor, deprived artisan” route because even just looking at the profile pictures you can tell these are not poor or deprived people.

“They were featured in some Wake-Up VDO” My problem with this statement is that you can’t even name the specific video. And I think you meant video, I googled “wake up vdo” and got nothing. Matter of fact I googled “documentary on Novica”, “I hate Novica”, and “the truth about Novica” and came up with nothing. How is it you haven’t cited sources? You want to inform us how bad they are but you haven’t backed it up. Nor did you make any recommendations on a fair trade site. If it was me that felt that passionately about my views I would offer some sort of alternative. But we got nothing to work with here.

My bottom line is if anyone has issue with a giveaway I am hosting, please email me. I would love to discuss it with you on a personal level. I felt someone was trying to sabotage a giveaway and I am not ok with that.

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