Victoria's Secret

Victoria's Secret is one of the most famous lingerie companies worldwide. They not only sell lingerie, they also sell clothing, and have branched off another very successful clothing brand called PINK. They also have world famous Fashion Shows with their angel models. In other words, Victoria's Secret seems like a pretty accurate company. But just like most other companies, VS also experiences problems with business ethics. VS wants to promise their customers organic, cotton panties, therefore the company buys all the cotton produced in Burkina Faso, a poor, third world country. VS had a deal with Burkina Faso that the cotton harvested would be done without the use of child labour but as a result was not. Poor, desperate farmers have been using their children to harvest the cotton fields. Victoria's Secret models were urging the children to work faster, so they could feed the world hunger for lingerie. The worst part is, is that Burkina Faso is such a poor country, that the children working on the cotton farms are helping their families survive day by day, needless to say that all families working on the farms are miserable and desperate.

 The Victoria's Secret company knowing this; say that they don’t want the children working the farms, that they want their supply to be chain free of misery and yet they still haven’t made changes. Victoria's Secret is still not willing to pay extra money for the cotton to help supply basic needs to these farmers like a meal of food. It could also be beneficial to VS because the more money they spend, the more workers/farmers they would need which means supply would increase and drive the prices down. The root of the story is, is that a successful, loved company like Victoria's Secret has children working the farms to supply their cotton. Each cotton pantie that VS sells cost approximately 7-10 dollars a single pantie. With these high prices, and good success rolling in for the company, you would think that they would want to end the child labour and put more bucks to support non child labour supply. Child labour is a business ethic issue because it goes against morality. Having children work on farms ten hours a day is wrong, and yet the VS company hasn’t made any effort to help make changes and better their companies supply team.

Short-Term or Long-Term ?

          A boy graduating high school is faced with a huge decision that could change his life. Eighteen year old Eddie has always dreamed of being rich someday so he could live a luxurious lifestyle when he’s older. His mom has always wanted Eddie to go to college after high school so he could become successful one day, and for the longest time, he thought his path after high school was going to be college. Then Eddie's uncle’s friend asked Eddie if he wanted to go straight to work after graduation and work for his very large, successful company called Heat Kings. Eddie would earn $15 an hour working five days a week for six hours a day. Therefore he would be making a good income of approximately $450 a week. Eddie is very excited about this offer, because he has money on his mind so he could then do and buy things that he always wanted.

The college that Eddie was thinking of going to was Seneca. Tuition for enrollment for one year at Seneca is around $8,000 not including books and extra fees. So now Eddie is at a stump, he needs to make a decision between making a short-term decision and making money the fastest way possible, or think long-term and go to college and doing well so he could be more successful in the future. On one hand, he will lose four years of salary while he’s at school getting his degree; and on the other hand, he hopes to earn more during his career thanks to the four years of schooling.

As a result, after graduation, Eddie made the smartest and most beneficial decision to attend Seneca college for four years and achieve a business degree. He might be losing craved money now, but in the future, if all goes well, he’ll be grateful for this decision.The opportunity cost of Eddie going to school is sacrificing fast money.