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.