A new Louis Vuitton campaign carrying headlines such as "The Seamstress With Linen Thread and Beeswax" suggests that its purses and wallets are handmade. But almost none are, reports Carol Matlack, who has visited the efficient, airy factory in Normandy. "Shouldn't the truth-in-advertising standard be tougher when a company is asking customers to shell out hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a mass-produced item?" Matlack asks. It's not a rhetorical question. Should we hold high-end products to a different standard than we do, say, rosy-cheeked milkmaids pushing dairy products? Matlack would like you to weigh …

David Lieberman gives a detailed rundown of the efforts of several major book publishers this week to challenge Amazon's $10 pricing on e-books -- which other e-reader marketers such as Barnes & Noble and Sony have been forced to match. Simon & Schuster and Hachette Book Group say that they will wait until about four months after some hard covers hit the shelves before releasing them as e-books. HarperCollins also says it will delay some titles and will also experiment with higher and lower e-book prices. Publishers "don't want Amazon to be the only game in …

A year ago this month, KPMG recommended that celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay declare bankruptcy for his London-based Gordon Ramsay Holdings Ltd., fire hundreds of people and close all but its best-performing restaurants. But, as William Green reports, that would have been a public relations nightmare for the star of "Hell's Kitchen," "Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares" and "The F Word." And Ramsay knew it. "There was no f---ing way that was ever going to happen," he says. "That was never even an option." The 43-year-old Scot has also published two autobiographies and lent his name to 23 cookbooks, …

Leave it to the propeller heads in brown to come up with an economic solution to a problem that has jaws dropping and tongues wagging in the Silicon Valley. When we last heard from the efficiency experts at United Parcel Service, they were designing drivers' routes to maximize right turns. Now about two dozen UPS delivery folk in northern California are using bicycles with trailers to get holiday goods where they need to go, reports columnist Mike Cassidy. "People are like really happy to see us bike around," says Justin Hurst, 22, who rides a …

McDonald's will begin national advertising this month for its snack wrap -- sliced burger patty, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions but no sesame-seed bun. Tests began last month; the wrap is now available in about half of McDonald's outlets across the country. It also plans to offer a $1 breakfast menu nationally that will feature a sausage burrito, a sausage biscuit, a sausage McMuffin, a 12-ounce coffee and hash browns. National advertising will begin in early January, according to spokeswoman Danya Proud. Although McDonald's is the leader in the fast-food breakfast arena, breakfast and lunch sales …

When Apple acquired music-streaming service La La Media for $85 million last week, it had nothing short of a new business model for iTunes in mind, write Ethan Smith and Yukari Iwatani Kane. Lala.com lets users buy and listen to music through a Web browser, and the new model would allow Apple to sell music through Web sites and search engines and not just at the online Apple store. But the plans are in the early stages, caution people familiar with them, and could change. If thinking about altering a wildly successful business sounds a bit contrary …