American-Made Clothing Companies Find Ways To Survive As Others Chase Cheap Labor Abroad - 5 views
-
-
Kelly Gallick on 03 Apr 14Most of the apparel that we wear is made in another country, and very rarely do I see something made in the US, which makes sense because the foreign-made clothing is much cheaper.
-
-
-
- ...17 more annotations...
-
-
-
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp336-us-china-auto-parts-industry/ This additional current event talks about the auto industry and how many are based in the US, but most of the small parts that go into making the cars are make in developing countries, like China. This is becoming a problem because some American workers are out of jobs due to the workers in China that do the same amount of work for less pay. Outsourcing of the apparel industry and the auto industry are very similar in this regard.
-
-
Henry has been in the apparel business for three decades, enough to see nearly all of his competitors disband or head overseas in search of workers who will do the job for lower wages. Henry has taken the opposite route, shrinking the geographic scope of his supply chain and making that a marketing feature.
-
His “most sustainable” T-shirt, which uses certified organic cotton, a transparent supply chain, with a patented environmentally-friendly print and dye system, costs around $14 wholesale. The same type of shirt would cost about $8 to make overseas, he estimated
-
bargains on store shelves in Los Angeles and Philadelphia may come at the expense of people toiling in unsafe conditions in Dhaka and Guatemala City.
-
His shirts are made in America, and not on the other side of the world, in a poor country in which workers may be mistreated.
-
If you take production overseas, the labor cost would be less than $1. The fabric and design cost doesn’t change much, he said, especially for a simple piece of apparel like a T-shirt.
-
“This industry is so mobile that it gets fixed in one place and then pops up somewhere else,” Rivoli said.
-
But American apparel manufacturing may eventually see a resurgence, some experts said. The garment industry is undergoing the kind of technological change reshaping many industries:
-
Machines are increasingly attending to tasks once performed by humans. That undercuts the overall cost advantages of going overseas in search of cheaper labor.
-
As automation emerges as a greater force in the apparel trade, that could send investment back to the United States, where mastery of machinery remains a core strength.