|
Kmart gets China flak
|
 |
April 11, 2001: 7:20 a.m. ET
Plane standoff leads to complaints about Chinese-made goods
|
NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Kmart Corp. has received thousands of calls and e-mails from customers urging the discount retailer to stop buying so many products from China, according to a published report Wednesday.
The New York Times said Wednesday that Kmart has received so much feedback that it has informed Chinese diplomats that it will find new suppliers of products such as shoes and t-shirts unless the crew of an American surveillance plane is released quickly, company executives told the paper.
The report was published prior to Wednesday's announcement by the Chinese government that the U.S. crew will soon be released.
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
These are just the people taking time out of their schedule to contact us. How many other people out there are thinking the same thing?
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
Dale Apley |
|
The complaints have been an unprecedented and spontaneous response to the overseas crisis, the executives told the Times. Customers were annoyed that the stores stocked so many "made in China" goods when American military personnel were being held in that country against their will, the executives said.
"Our customers are telling us to quit doing business in China -- that they're not going to buy things made there anymore," Dale Apley, vice president for public policy at Kmart (KM: Research, Estimates), told the Times. "These are just the people taking time out of their schedule to contact us. How many other people out there are thinking the same thing?"
Click here to view other retail stocks
The consumer anger may suggest that the standoff could potentially unsettle one of the key aspects of the United States-China relationship: that trade and investment have previously thrived regardless of breaks in bilateral ties during the last 15 years, the paper said.
Kmart shares fell 31 cents to $8.70 in Tuesday trading. 
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
