China

I just got home from a week long trip to China.  I definitely caught the first-timer's paranoia virus:  it feels like China is an unstoppable force, so big, so energetic, so much momentum.  The quip that we should start learning Mandarin soon has an element of truth to it.  Their low wages, aggressive business culture, and lax regulatory / environmental climate are hard to compete against.

There is some good news for a company like ours, however.  While the Chinese can mimic artwork with impresive technical skill, creativity and original artistic expression is exceedingly rare.  And when it does occur, it has to luck out to be the kind of work that gains widespread acceptance in the market.  It's not to say that it can't happen eventually, but until their artists are traveling the world and connecting with global trends (not just copying them), we'll have a strong advantage in creativity and design.  And that's where we will continue to focus harder than ever.

Another bit of positive news is that the level of piracy of our images at several trade shows appears to be down somewhat.  There's still plenty of illegal copying going on, but government focus on copyrights and our own efforts to combat rip-offs is resulting in some progress.