High Heel Shoe blog

We were reading an interesting news article in the Intelligencer Journal / Lancaster New Era which was published on November 03, 2010. We thought we would share it and put in our own thoughts.

The night of November 1, 2010, a Lancaster, PA man grabbed a pair of women’s high-heel shoes, put them on and walked out of a Park City Center store, police allege.

Eckman, 22, picked out a pair of Elle heels — which cost $69.99 — in the Kohl’s store, then he took them inside a men’s fitting room in the shoe department, where he put them on, city police said.

He then put the shoe box in a shopping bag and left the store. He was stopped outside Kohl’s wearing the size 10 heels. His own shoes were in the shoe box inside his shopping bag, police said.

Because he has two prior retail theft convictions, Eckman was charged with felony retail theft, police said. He also was charged with giving police a false name. He was arraigned and sent to Lancaster County Prison in lieu of $50,000 cash bail.

Did he not think he would draw attention wearing heels to begin with? And to try to get away running in heels? No offense intended, but yet another dumb criminal to go on the list.

Since September 2005, purchases of clothing and footwear costing $110 or more per item or pair in New York City incurred a 8 7/8% rate. Purchases costing less than $110 were fully exempt.

As of Friday, October 1, 2010, New Yorkers can expect to pay higher prices at the register on clothing and footwear. A 4.375 percent tax is now being charged on these items that cost less than $110. This was put in place as an attempt to collect more revenue to help offset the state’s projected $8.2 billion deficit. For the next six months, all clothing and footwear purchased in the city will be charged the four-percent New York State sales and use tax, as well as an additional 3/8 percent Metropolitan Commuter Transportation District tax to benefit the MTA.

The exemption will return in April of 2011 through March of 2012, but only on clothing and footwear purchases less than $55. Unless another change to the law is passed, the under $110 exemption will be back for good on April 1, 2012.

Cops hear every story imaginable from drivers stopped for driving drunk. Anything from “I can handle my liquor” to “It’s a short drive home”, I wonder how many have heard that their shoes are why they drove?

In London on July 17, a Scottish businesswoman claimed in court that she decided to drink and drive as she was not able to walk quickly enough in her high heels.

Kyra Ritchie and her husband and friends were staying in town in a hotel to celebrate a friend’s birthday. She argued that she struggled to keep up with a group of friends because of the shoes she was wearing on a night out, she decided to turn back to change them and got behind the wheel of her car to catch up with them.

The court was told that Ritchie was wearing training shoes when she was stopped by the police and found to be well over twice the legal limit.

It being her first offense, she has been banned from driving for 18 months and fined 360 pounds (approximately $550 USD). Although she showed up for court wearing 5 inch heels, she changed out of them before leaving into a pair of sensible boots.

Most everyone is aware that not only the US has been suffering economically.

We have discussed a couple times in the past the Affordable Footwear Act. No, none of the current manufacturers of footwear in the US oppose the Affordable Footwear Act. This is because we do not make the kind of shoes here in the US that are being imported from China to be sold here. But while people here are fighting to eliminate the import fees on footwear being imported from China, China’s Commerce Ministry imposed a 96.5% duty on certain types of nylon imports from the US, more than doubling a preliminary anti-dumping tariff of 36.2% set last October. In the meantime the European Union, Russia and Taiwan were assessed anti-dumping penalties in October’s ranging between 4% to 23.9%.

We would like to explain what an anti-dumping duty is. It is a penalty imposed upon suspiciously low-priced imports, to increase their price in the importing country and so protect local industry from unfair competition. Anti-dumping duties are assessed generally in an amount equal to the difference between the importing country’s FOB price of the goods and (at the time of their importation) the market value of similar goods in the exporting country or other countries.

In Europe the economy is hurting as well. Unlike the US though they have extended import duties of up to 16.5 percent on Chinese shoes.

In December, Brussels extended import duties of up to 16.5 per cent on Chinese shoes, claiming that they unfairly undercut the cost of EU producers.

The European Footwear Alliance, estimates that EU consumers and businesses could lose hundreds of millions of euros through 2011. Meanwhile, the charges could generate euro 1 billion in tariffs, without helping Europe recoup lost manufacturing jobs because shoes from China and Vietnam are now being replaced by imports from other emerging countries.

The charges add between 9.7 percent and 16.5 percent to the import price of Chinese shoes and 10 percent to Vietnamese shoes. The EU says that equates to price jumps less than euro 1.50 for shoes that sell for euro 50, because the product is being imported at a price around euro 9.

So why are we trying to make it better for China to sell their goods here in the US while they are making it even harder for us to sell our goods in China?