Why are Israeli women selling Dead Sea salts/lotion at mall kiosks?

[NorthAmericanguy]

I was on the internet looking for more information as to why I keep running into young beautiful Israeli women working in the malls at various Kiosks that sell Dead Sea salts/lotion.

I then found this AWESOME article that not only answers my question, but then goes into a little history of American malls and how it's changed over the years.

Enjoy!

http://www.labelscar.com/uncategorized/excuse-me-sir

"First off, happy Thanksgiving from Labelscar! As we all know, today officially ushers in the 2008 holiday shopping season, despite the fact that many stores have been sneaking up holiday decorations here and there since Halloween, or even before that.

Every November and December, we get excited about the prospects of the holiday shopping season, but this one is particularly important as it may make or break some very large-scale retailers. Sears, for example, is counting on shoppers between now and Christmas to shell out big time, or they’ll be in some serious trouble. Sears is far from alone, as many other large chains like Circuit City are all feeling the ill effects of the slow economy. The problems aren’t even confined to retailers either. General Growth Properties, owners of 200 regional shopping centers in 45 states, announced they were a billion dollars in debt earlier this month and might be having trouble keeping the doors open and the lights on. We’ll keep a close eye on what’s going on, but in the mean time, make sure you spend your money wisely at your favorite retailers, else they get sunk in ’09.

As we join the millions out pounding the mall tiles this weekend, we wanted to highlight a growing problem in malls: obnoxious kiosks. We’ve actually intended to write about them for some time, and we thought the upcoming holiday shopping season combined with an excellent article in the local paper exposing their nonsense was a good opportunity.

If you aren’t familiar with the setup, it goes a little something like this. You’re walking down the concourse of a mall, whistling dixie (or a different appropriately-happy tune), when you pass by a kiosk set up in the middle of the mall with one or two employees eagerly hovering near it. They might even be crouched or hidden at this point, and that’s fine. It’ll add suspense. They’re almost always foreign (and we’ll try to address that in a bit), and before you realize it they’re approaching, wait, invading your personal space. “Excuse me!� one of them eagerly blurts, as she holds her hand out as if she is going to actually touch you, �I have a question for you!�

If you’re new to this sales tactic, you might freak out and jump or something. If you’re a nice enough person you’ll probably also respond and get sucked in for a bit. At this point, we feel sorry for you.

If you’re a seasoned veteran to this ploy, as many are, you may simply say “no thanks� and they’ll sometimes go away – but don’t count on it. I’ve read and experienced personally numerous accounts of super-aggressive sales tactics employed by these individuals, including (but not limited to) following you down the concourse up to 20 feet while repeatedly drilling you with questions and trying different pitches, and even making strange noises like clicking or hissing to get your attention.

One of these individuals who was selling aromatherapy packs/pillows popped out from somewhere once (I swear he came from the ceiling) and began violently punching his pack/pillow/whatever 6 inches from my face while saying something like “How does it smell?� in some non-standard english accent. I had to move to get out of the way. And at a mall in Orange County, California, a man selling those heely-roller wheels that go on kids’ shoes was wearing his product and would quickly zoom around the corner of his cart when he saw someone coming, not only scaring the hell out of the person, but causing a mildly dangerous situation in the process. No good.

Most of the time I’ve found the best tactic is to ignore these people completely. They usually give up fastest if you don’t give them any attention at all; sure, they might call after you for a bit - �Sir! Sir!! I have a question for you sir!� – but if you don’t make eye contact or pretend to not even notice them they usually find other prey rather quickly.

Others have not been so lucky. A girl in Madison, Wisconsin came home crying after being sucked in to aggressive sales tactics at a Hair crap kiosk there (see below), and it took her dad 30 minutes to get her money back. Another woman was having her hands rubbed by a Moroccan man at one of the skin care kiosks and he creepily hit on her, asking for her number. Yet another woman was accosted by a man at a toy kiosk when he attempted to operate one of the toys on her person without warning, causing her to jump erratically and dangerously into a group of dwarves, killing them. I may have made that last part up.

So really, what gives? Why is this harassment even allowed, and what (if anything) is being done about it?

In the early days, there were fewer kiosks, existing for a variety of reasons, in malls and none of them seemed to employ these shady sales techniques. Growing up in the 80s, we remember the days when mall kiosks sold earrings, watches and various foodstuffs, and none of them had people jumping out at you clicking and hissing.

Early mall concourses had a variety of non-retail aesthetic accoutrements, including conversation pits with seating, ample foilage including trees of all kinds, and elaborate fountains. There were even nonstandard features in some malls like aviaries, monorails and hanging gardens. Wow. All of these features were the result of an early (mid-century) vision of what malls were supposed to be: community gathering places with an emphasis of place-making within new suburban communities. Retail was the focus, but early developers sought to build artful, planned masterpieces to give malls a more wholesome sense of place than a sterile place of commerce. As these malls ’replaced’ downtowns in suburban fringe areas, developers wanted them to be as aesthetically beautiful as they were functional, because people viewed them as community centers and they provided culture to a vast landscape of bland, suburban sameness. See Victor Gruen for more on this.

Today, many enclosed malls are sterile, soulless husks of their former selves, where maximized profits per square foot have replaced aesthetics. As renovations have taken place during the 1990s and more recently, the trees, fountains, and foliage have been removed and replaced with wall-to-wall kiosks in order to meet this end. In fact, from 1997 to 2003 the amount of retail carts in malls has doubled, from 900 to 1,800. In addition, these carts can account for 10 percent of an entire mall’s sales, which is more significant than we thought.

To be fair, many kiosks do not employ these shady techniques and never have. In fact, kiosk2.jpgmany of the early kiosks, like Piercing Pagoda, Watch Station, Sunglass Hut, as well as many of the modern ones hawking blinky Jesus portraits, computers, real estate, Crocs, pet stuff, belts, toys, jackets, and even Starbucks have never employed obnoxious sales schemes and do the old-fashioned “wait for the customer to come up to you� which seems to work out for them just fine.

In fact, there are only a small handful of the types of kiosks who do annoy us. Many of them are really selling the same, or similar, products and operate under the guise of different names, and here’s a list of the most popular offenders:

Dead Sea. Possibly the worst offender in terms of overall harassment are the Dead Sea people. They operate under several guises, like Seacret Sea, and sell mostly skin/nail care products marketed to be special because they’re from the Dead Sea. Often they use beautiful Middle Eastern women as salespeople and will pester both men and women who are walking through the mall. At least one of the Dead Sea carts is a scam and marketing products actually from Texas, and not the Dead Sea. If you have a Dead Sea kiosk story be sure to share it in the comments.

Cell Phones. The cell phone kiosks began popping up like hotcakes about 10 years ago and today, every major cell provider usually has at least one kiosk in every major mall throughout the country. Many of them don’t actually call out to people walking through the mall, but some of them will. Personally we’ve been asked if we a.) have a cell phone (who doesn’t?) and b.) whether or not we need to switch plans or upgrade a phone. The cell phone people have been less annoying lately though, at least to me. Maybe they finally got the memo that nearly everyone has a cell phone, and most people are locked into contracts and can’t just hop between providers at the drop of a hat. Also, the cell phone people are not recruited overseas, unlike the others mentioned below. Does anyone still find the cell phone kiosks to be annoying today?

Hair crap. These kiosks sell everything from curling irons to straightening irons, and extensions; and more disturbingly, they use their demonstration products on everyone without cleaning them. Sounds real sanitary.

The blanket people. These clever individuals are usually holding a blanket, purse, sweater, or other soft or texturally pleasing item and they will pop out (again, from the floor or something) and try to get you to touch it.

Massage stuff. This one might be the creepiest, because these people will often “demonstrate� their massage toys on you with little to no warning as you walk by. Try not to fall down or into other shoppers as you either freak out or become lulled by the massage, or both.

There are other types, too, and again feel free to tell us about them in the comments.

So who operates these kiosks, anyway? At first glance, many people notice the employees of these carts are foreigners of vague Middle Eastern/North African descent, many of whom speak with varying accents and clearly aren’t American. In fact, these kiosk operators are specifically and strategically recruited overseas by firms wanting to sell their gadgets and make a quick buck at the malls. Young Israelis are targeted in particular due to the time off they often take after their required military service, which takes place following high school. In many cases, they are also working illegally on a tourist visa and have been deported for this. In addition, others have also been deported for suspected involvement in espionage against the USA.

This overseas recruitment and illegal activity is perhaps the most surprising and alarming component of this situation, establishing a so-called “Cart Culture� in malls throughout the United States consisting mostly of eager young Middle Eastern men and women seeking to make a relatively significant amount of money when compared to similar options back home. In fact, many of the Cart Culture participants do stick together and seek housing arrangements and social lives together because of their shared backgrounds.

This situation, too, may also be telling of why the aggressive, annoying business practices are employed by many of these individuals, simply because they are not familiar with our own retail culture. Of course, the cell phone kiosks, which annoy many people, do not recruit overseas and still practice these aggressive tactics. However, in many other countries, aggressive sales tactics are used at bazaars, souks and street fairs because that is the cultural norm. In addition, similar pricing practices as street fairs and souks are utilized at these carts, such as bargaining, which are often employed by the carts.

At an American shopping mall, buyers are used to a fixed, visibly marked price on all items for sale as well as having to approach the shopkeeper, or at least enter his store prior to being approached. Our culture frowns upon cold-selling pitches by retailers in public, and we deem them annoying and uncouth most of the time. We respect the more culturally appropriate retailers who do not employ aggressive tactics and who instead wait for the shopper to approach before beginning a sales pitch. We Americans have a place for the “cold sales approach� – in flea markets and at state fairs, and once we’ve entered a specific store, but not ever walking through the main mall concourse.

But isn’t the purpose of a mall to sell things? Why are we so bothered by being approached in a mall by a salesperson? To us, the main mall concourse belongs to the public realm of space and we consider our intentions in that space to be in-transit and not related to a specific retailer or the selling process, unless we go in a store or approach a retailer on our own. Even though we are inside a mall, a place devoted to selling, being approached in the main concourse space is inappropriate and annoying, akin to being approached while walking down the sidewalk, while driving our cars, or solicited at home by a door-to-door salesman. To us, the presence of the carts isn’t any more annoying as a billboard on the highway or an advertisement in a store window, but as soon as we are bothered in what we deem is a public space we get upset and feel our personal space has been violated.

So what can we do to curb this problem? We don’t think the solution is to lash out at the poor kiosk employee. For reasons mentioned above, they are entrenched in the Cart Culture, and it wasn’t created by them; they’re just here trying to make some money. If anything, they’re almost as much of a victim of it as the poor lady who fell on the floor after being surprised by a massage spider. We think the best thing to do might be to continue writing letters and complaining, and letting mall management know that this type of harassment is not acceptable in our shopping environment and we will take our business elsewhere. Shopping malls are teetering on thin ice as it is, and the economy isn’t helping things, so our voices are even louder than ever now. At least one mall, Natick Mall in Massachusetts, forbids aggressive sales tactics.

Another solution might be to reconsider how the carts are placed in the mall entirely. Instead of assembling a linear barrage of them along the mall corridors waiting to attack each and every person who walks by, maybe establish a separate area for them and set it up like a bazaar or a fair? Many state fairs and large conventions have exposition halls filled with vendor stalls separated by rows, and in no way are they unpopular. If the carts go there, then the people who go to visit them would be inviting themselves to the cold sale and won’t be as disgusted by it as they would just walking through the mall.

Make sure you leave your opinions on these kiosks/carts, your experiences, and any and other specifics you want to discuss in the comments section. Keep an eye on them the next time you go to the mall, but maybe watch what you wear. I think we can get some interesting dialogue going on this topic."

[Winston]

They have that in Philippines now too. There is a kiosk in the mall in Angeles City where Israelis and Filipinos are selling Dead Sea salts and skin lotions. They are very pushy and the products are expensive. I took at look at it and they were a ripoff yet the sales people kept pushing me as though they believed I already made up my mind to buy their products, which I didn't. It was a bit annoying. Who buys that stuff? It's overpriced and unnecessary. There are plenty of good skin lotions for a lot less.

[Cornfed]

If it is anything to do with the Jews it is probably a front for espionage of some sort.

[Winston]

If it is anything to do with the Jews it is probably a front for espionage of some sort.

But why would the Jews need to do espionage in the US? They already own the US. The US government gives Israel 17 billion dollars a year, without the consent of the American people or Congress. And no one is allowed to protest it. That's a clear sign of ownership. As Voltaire said, "To find out who rules over you, find out who you are not allowed to criticize."

But why would they need to be doing it in the Philippines? Anyone in the Philippines can be bought so they can just buy whatever they want there right?

[Winston]

Btw speaking of Jewish espionage, did you know that it was a Jewish couple named the Rosenbergs, that sold the secrets to the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union? They were executed for it by the US government.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_an ... _Rosenberg

[Cornfed]

did you know that it was a Jewish couple named the Rosenbergs, that sold the secrets to the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union?

Of course. All the commie spies of that era were Jews. The whole McCarthy thing was about targeting Jews. It is a pity McCarthy lacked the courage to expose communism as the Jewish ethnic plot that it was and is.