Rip Curl

Ethics in business are moral principles encouraging companies to make the right choice. Honesty and fairness are two crucial points to create a win-win situation between employer-employee or company-client, to manage a business while making a profit. Unfortunatly, ethical issues in business have become significantly troubled. Rip Curl is one of the textil companies suffering from serious ethical controversies. As high rank on a global scale force to be extremely competitive, it leads to make some non-ethical choices. Indeed, the brand has the lowest sustainability score (Rankabrand in 2012). Thus, is it ethical for a company to follow his own code of conduct? This essay will deal with the backgrounds of the company first and ,then will explore the two main ethical issues related to Rip Curl namely being the code of conduct and the transparency.

Rip Curl was founded in 1970 in Australia by two men whom both shared a love for the waves. War brick and Singer are the two men behind what they considered a surfing revolution and that is what the company became. Their first products consisted of wetsuits and surf boards, that were home tested by the two owners. Now the company sells day to day appeal on top of the original items. Rip Curl started off huge, but it never fully adjusted to the changing ethics in their 28 years, even their motto “Born at Bells” proves they haven’t been changing since.

Therefore, the first ethical issue associated with Rip Curl is related to the Code of Conduct. Rip Curl do not publicly communicate their labor policy whereas sustainability information ought be accessible without difficulty to allow consumers to make more responsible choices. As their Code of Conduct appears to be extremely arduous to obtain, it can be supposed that RiP Curl do not even possesses one (Rankabrand 2012).

An additionnal issue is about the transparency. Indeed, on their webpage they mentionned nine corporate Licensess outside Australia making and selling the products whereas, on driftsurfing interview, they stated they are made in their factory in Thailand . That is to say the information they go out with are not entirely communicated to the public, furthermore, they contradict themselves which can be perceived as a lack of credibility by clients.

To sum up, global companies still have some difficulties to remain ethical especially when the purpose is to reduce the production cost to optimize the sales. The example of Rip Curl has shown that even if it is a popular surf brand, the consumers are unaware about the product traceability. In order to be ethical, Rip Curl should share more informations about the sustainability of its products and should communicate much more about it supply chain. All these informations would permit consumer’s awareness. The more the brand is transparent and communicative, the more people will trust it.

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