gistfile1.txt

#!/usr/bin/env python

import csv

class UnicodeCsvReader(object):
    def __init__(self, f, encoding="utf-8", **kwargs):
        self.csv_reader = csv.reader(f, **kwargs)
        self.encoding = encoding

    def __iter__(self):
        return self

    def next(self):
        # read and split the csv row into fields
        row = self.csv_reader.next() 
        # now decode
        return [unicode(cell, self.encoding) for cell in row]

    @property
    def line_num(self):
        return self.csv_reader.line_num

class UnicodeDictReader(csv.DictReader):
    def __init__(self, f, encoding="utf-8", fieldnames=None, **kwds):
        csv.DictReader.__init__(self, f, fieldnames=fieldnames, **kwds)
        self.reader = UnicodeCsvReader(f, encoding=encoding, **kwds)



writer = csv.writer(open('out.csv', 'wb'))

for row in UnicodeCsvReader(open('./Products_Sample.csv', 'rb')):
    if row[0]:
        writer.writerow(map(lambda x: x.encode('utf8'), row))