Sacrificing Quality for Price

Picture yourself shopping with your closet friends at a local mall. There is a designer shirt that exemplifies your individualism. It has the embroidery design that is all over the runway and the lace accents that compliment everyone’s silhouette. Enthralled with its beauty you look at the price and it is $180.00! Aghast you quickly place the shirt back on the rack and leave the store before you blow an entire paycheck on one item. Never fear, because, while walking down the alley of stores you find that exact top at Forever 21. You swiftly walk into the dressing room and try on your dream item. It fits perfectly and is only $45.00. Thinking the price is a mistake you swiftly purchase the shirt; ecstatic at your own self-control for finding the best price and shopping genius. Going home later that day you decide to wash the shirt before wearing it for a date tonight. After the thirty-minute washing cycle you pull out the new favorite shirt. It is destroyed. The lace design has ripped, stitching in the embroidery came lose, and there is a mysterious hole in the side that was not there earlier. Infuriated you go back to forever 21 and demand a full refund for this terrible purchase. Unfortunately, they do not give refunds only store credit. Now you are shirtless and have credit to a store that you immediately regret walking into.

What happened to this shirt? Did you make a bad decision by shying away from the designer top and buying the discounted item? I am all for a good bargain and frequently price shop or hit the sales rack before browsing new inventory. But I feel that the United States has sacrificed quality items for the lowest price. The apparel industry is a cutthroat market that struggles for low prices while still maintaining high quality. Competition this fierce has been blamed on the plummeting costs and standards for clothes. Stores such as Forever 21 are known for there bargain prices and designer looks. But this company in particular has undergone over fifty lawsuits from disgruntled designers that claim to have had designs, fabric and clothing stolen. This article http://www.dailyfinance.com/2011/08/15/forever-21-angers-indie-designers-attracts-shoppers/ talks  talks about the most recent scandal relating to Forever 21.

High fashion markets such as Dolce and Gabbana have undergone extensive design branding from sunglasses to underwear in order to ensure product continuity throughout the fashion market. They have gone as far as inserting chips in the clothes that can be scanned to insure a true Dolce and Gabbana purchase. The purpose of designer items is there uniqueness and insured quality; you buy this merchandise knowing you will have it for years. Research has shown that customers do care about the quality of there clothes as well as how they are made. If there is a social pressure on brands to create quality products the retailers and brands that attain and publicize these improvements will have the competitive advantage. Customers get good products while businesses are successful, win-win right? Unfortunately, it is not that simple.

There are five major players in the life of a clothing item materials, production, retail, usage, and disposal. All of these factors have a say in the design, fabric, and price of every piece of clothing. The complex supply chains make it difficult to pinpoint a specific contributor to how to ensure quality for the t-shirt a consumer sees on a sales rack. I believe that raising awareness to why clothing is so cheap is key. There needs to be fair pay further down the supply chain, there is an illustration on page eight of Forum for the Future Fashioning Sustainability that shows the prices for production of an average t-shirt in the UK. Cotton yarn from USA 0.55 Euros, Fabric from China was 1.08 Euros, Knitted t-shirt from China 1.96 Euros, Wholesale from UK 2.65 Euros, and final Retail in the UK is 7.00 Euros. As you can see the majority of the production for this shirt was outside of the UK but they are receiving the highest profit, good for UK bad for China and USA. When was the last time you looked at a shirt or pair of pants and it said made in the USA? I implore you to find five items in your closet right now that were produced in the USA. Fair trade has to be a necessity when creating clothing, with the money being evenly distributed throughout the spectrum higher quality products will be more common.

  Blues Jeans is a perfect example for fair trade and quality products; this company only does business with ethical producers and is completely created in the States. No sweatshops or unfair labor has been used in the production of these jeans. In an interview with one of the owners she stated that it is extremely difficult to find upstanding traders in the fashion business. Everyone is looking to make the most profit and have forgotten about the quality of there products. There jeans are expensive but you can assure yourself that they were created ethically and with care. Along with using fair trade products, it is important to personalize merchandise. Tell the consumer where it was made, who created it, and how to best care for it will make the purchase more personal and have the consumer want to take better care of it. A store like 10,000 Villages is a perfect example of telling stories with their products. While shopping online you see a picture of the artists and tells there story as well as the materials used to create the merchandise you are about to buy. Everything is fair trade please look at there website http://www.tenthousandvillages.com/ it is an amazing store. If a store sells a quality product consumers will be loyal to them. According to a recent study consumers are willing to pay more for an ethically made and higher priced product. Quality insurance is what all consumers desire when making a purchase and being educated in the manufacturing and pricing of ethical products is key to success. If consumers demand ethical and quality products producers will have to comply. Every factor in the clothing industry needs to work together to improve the quality and ethical dilemma when designing clothes. That way everyone can enjoy fashion without damaging the quality of designer items. So the next time you go into a store be educated in their production and quality background. You may think twice on buying a knockoff.