American Apparel, a different kind of brand and a pantless CEO

I mentioned AA in the previous post and I write about them briefly in the book. I stumbled upon an excerpt from Rob Walkers soon-to-be-released book Buying In that features a profile of the company. Here’s some excerpts from the excerpt:

…At a moment when practically every clothes maker was offshoring to cut costs, American Apparel made its wares at a U.S. factory in which the average industrial worker (usually a Latino immigrant) was paid between $12 and $13 an hour and got medical benefits. The company had taken out ads in little arty magazines, noting that it was “sweatshop free.”…

…Another self-consciously ethical clothing brand, the union-friendly SweatX, had just gone out of business. The lesson of SweatX, Charney said, was that building a brand solely around a company’s ethical practices was not a good strategy for reaching masses of consumers…

…”That’s the problem with the anti-sweatshop movement. You’re not going to get customers walking into stores by asking for mercy and gratitude.” If you want to sell something, ethical or otherwise, he said, snapping the book closed, “appeal to people’s self-interest.”…

…The conversation paused when two designers working on men’s underwear appeared. They had just come from the factory floor, carrying several pairs of underwear that had been manufactured about 10 minutes earlier. Charney said they’d already gone through about 30 prototypes. “Imagine if we were outsourcing through China!”

He checked with me, then took off his pants and underwear and started trying on the samples. “I need a thin Sharpie,” he said, taking off one pair and putting on another. He wrote on the removed pair: Good but tighter. There was a great deal of chatter about the legs and the waist, about taking in a half-inch, about the fact that the factory shift was going to end soon. “This is a great pair that I have on right now,” Charney suddenly announced…

…It’s not that he cares less about treating his workers ethically, Charney insisted; it’s that he doesn’t think trumpeting work conditions will help him compete. Sure, he hoped quality or social consciousness or a distaste for logos would each attract some consumers. But he also hoped that selling a sexed-up version of youth culture to young people would attract others, and hopefully in greater numbers. If ethics draws in some consumers, great. But for others who respond to different rationales, he’ll provide those, too…

Walker’s book is released June 3rd. I wish it would have been out sooner because it looks like just the type of book I would have read to help me form ideas to write mine. I’ll still give it a read.

You can read a few chapters of Buying In.

Where I’m wearing today: Adventures of an engaged consumer

Welcome to the newest regular, irregular feature here at WAIW?. In each “Where I’m wearing today: Adventure of an engaged consumer” post, I will select an item of clothing that I’m wearing and see what I can learn about the brand and country that produce it with a few clicks of the mouse.

I’m sure the posts will evolve over time, but, for now, here’s the methodology.

1) Link to the brands corporate code of conduct, if they have one, and list what’s good about it and what’s not-so good about it.

2) Google “(brands name) + sweatshop” and see if any red flags popup.

3) Google “garment industry + (country of origin)” to see what the latest news is in industry.

4) Give basic country facts: per capita income, unemployment rate, etc.

So, without further ado, let’s give it a go.

Today I’m wearing a pair of North Face cargo shorts Made in Bangladesh.

North Face is owned by the VF Corporation. It took several clicks to find this out and several more to locate their code of conduct and compliance materials. VF also owns North Face, Reef, Lee, Rustler, Nautica, and many others.

1) Corporate responsibility

The good –

The VF Corporation has the standard code of compliance.

Provide info on their auditing procedures (13 pages) and auditing reports (40 pages).

Audit Procedure – “Nothing can be done even a sample until a factory inspection has taken place. Will be done by an accredited auditing company. Conduct an annual review.”

“Due to political, environmental, and human rights issues there are certain countries
that are deemed unacceptable for the manufacture of VF products. This is a
continually changing situation, so the VF compliance office maintains an updated
listing.”

Work with Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production

Hires Verite to train factories on compliance.

The not-so good–

Don’t reveal factory locations.

Only two brands – Lee and JanSport – work with the FLA. They do this because they sell these brands to colleges. This shows the strength of the Sweatfree movement on college campuses.

Brags that average score of their owned/operated factories is 96% compliant, but the factories are graded on their own grading scale.

2) Negative press –

Humanitynews.net complains about the purchase of North Face uniforms for their police force : “Some police uniforms come from Horace Small and North Face, affiliates of the largest apparel corporation on the globe, VF Corporation. They don’t list factory locations, but Horace Small participates in W.R.A.P., a non-profit monitoring contractor. (Other affiliates of VF Corp., such as Nautica, are known to have sweatshops in Myanmar, which is a military dictatorship.)”

3) Made in Bangladesh in the news

I posted recently about the striking workers in Bangladesh.

4) Bangladesh Facts

Per capita income – $1,400. Considering that the workers I met in Bangladesh earned between $30-$70 a month, this # shows that per capita income isn’t that useful when looking at how much garment workers actually get paid in a particular country.

Unemployment – 2.5%. This seems pretty good until you consider…

Population below poverty – 45%