Word: low-end
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...After years of urging by Washington, Chinese authorities have allowed the yuan to rise about 5% against the dollar over the past 18 months. That makes Chinese goods more expensive in America, and the pinch is already being felt by some of China's manufacturers of textiles and other low-end merchandise. The annual trade fair in Guangzhou, a city at the vanguard of China's march toward capitalism over the past two decades, was overcrowded as usual last October with prospective foreign buyers of toys, clothing, shoes and handbags. But there was a difference, say businessmen who attended...
...Shenzhen's manufacturers are facing many of the same problems that bedevil South Korea and Taiwan, where makers of low-end products, beset by competition and eroding margins, have in recent years been trying to make the transition to more sophisticated products. Shenzhen is trying to jump-start that transition by removing obstacles facing inventive startups. Six years ago, Xian-Ping Lu left his job as director of research at an R&D center for a pharmaceutical firm in the U.S. and, with other researchers, planned to set up their own company in China. Although they considered cities like Shanghai...
...able to shed costs and maintain a price advantage over rivals. But this year Dell's competitors have attacked that price gap. HP slashed thousands of jobs and reduced the number of assembly plants, streamlining its supply chain and enabling it to go head to head with Dell on low-end machines. Retailers have also cut prices, even selling at cost and relying on upgrades and services for profits...
...which sells meat, fish and other goods to high-end restaurants around the U.S. "Mario starts playing with pig bellies and tripe and intestines and even the bladder, and then a lot of people have followed and placed orders [for the same items]. He has reawakened those, quote, low-end cuts...
...corporate America's periodically insane conglomerate phases and decided to combine Lacoste with another brand, Izod. The company got lucky, riding the preppie fashion wave in the 1980s. Then, desperate for sales growth, Big G cheapened the shirt, reduced the price to $35, and sold it everywhere, even to low-end stores like Wal-Mart. "They ran it into the ground," says Courtney Reeser, managing director of Landor Associates, a brand-consultancy company...