Yank, Go Home

For three years Mark Shaw, a U.S. marketing and production expert, worked in Europe to help the French shoe and clothing industries increase productivity.

Last week Shaw, who was manager of the Famous Department Stores' West Coast chain before entering Government service, ended his stint in France with a blast at French industrialists. U.S. funds for the program, he told French officials, usually ended in the hands of the "enemies of productivity"--the powerful, price-fixing French trade associations. Summing up French reaction to the program, Shaw quoted an executive of a men's wear trade association that had accepted $228,000 to improve marketing and distribution: "We do not need you Americans. All we want is your money."

Some French manufacturers welcomed and profited by American planning. Strasbourg's Vestra Co., one of the big French clothing manufacturers, streamlined buying, manufacturing and selling along U.S. lines, increased productivity 30%, boosted sales 40%, cut prices and raised wages 15%. Marseille's Soulet shoe company trebled sales volume in a little more than one year by dropping unprofitable lines, reorganizing production and revitalizing sales policy. Altogether, said Shaw, 8,500 French shoe and men's clothing workers are now drawing higher wages by producing more goods, while the French consumer is paying less for many items.

But fewer than 1% of the manufacturers approached by Shaw actually carried through with productivity plans. He blamed the lack of interest on trade associations, such as the French Women's Garment Industry Federation, which would rather suppress competition and preserve high profit margins than raise wages and lower prices by increasing employees' output. After three years in which he had not once seen France's anticartel laws enforced, Shaw said French enterprise is more fettered than free. His prescription: some U.S.-style "trustbusting" to dissolve restrictive cartels.

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