In european clothing there is clear visible trend to 'locally' manufactured clothings. A lot of european brands moved to UK or Turkey.
Given that a pair of Jeans in Europe costs usually 100 EUR or more in retail, I never understood why the manufacturing couldn't cost more than 5 USD somewhere in South East Asia.
Because the retailers and the manufacturers aren't the same companies - the retailers are looking for the cheapest goods to buy and have a lot of other expenses as well (rent, wages for shop staff, capital for maintaining inventory, etc).
My family had a textile factory in Israel from the 1970s until the mid 90s - it used to be very, very profitable until the market opened up to imports from China/India in the 90s. Within a few short years my parents had to shut down the factory because they couldn't compete with countries where the prevailing wage was < 1/10th as much as Israeli minimum wage.
Re:America Is Back in the Factory Business
by robomartin on Sunday April 09, 2023 @08:37PM
(#35507885)
Exactly the same situation. Even better, military clothing contract cancelled once imports from China came in. Brilliant.
There are so many layers to this. At $15 per hour minimum wage the math simply does not add-up. People are not willing to pay enough for clothing to be able to support mass US or European manufacturing. That cork was put on that bottle a long time ago. This, BTW, is the case for lots of other sectors, not just clothing.