IDEA MACHINE INC.

The comments sell this more than anything else.

gaws:

thesigother:

cbenjamin:

howtotalktogirlsatparties:

tinaratedtinaapproved:

keepsdiary:

dearcassandra:

All this shopping recently got me to thinking…

I always cringe a bit when I see things like this, especially when people outside of the industry see it. It makes the clothing industry look completely evil, but markups exist in EVERY business out there. Otherwise it’s not a business. I can make a graph about how many pennies it cost to produce the alcohol you’re paying $10.00 for at a bar, or how you theoretically are overcharging your consulting employer by 100% because you are not producing a physical product.

Please remember that markups exist so people like me and those that are working to produce these products can make a living. We to need to pay bills, buy food and pay people we employ.

I’m glad someone weighed in on this. Infographics like this can be way too misleading. I have a dog in this fight, so it’s hard to take my opinion as unbiased, but ‘markup’ is kind of a pejorative term. The idea that markups like this only exist in the fashion industry is ludicrous. Look at Apple.

How much should a designer get paid for designing something? How much would you want to get paid to sew the same thing over and over again for 5 days a week? What about the people who work in the warehouse, packing and shipping everything? They need to get paid, as do the drivers, the lawyer that helped right the terms of sale and return policies, etc., etc., etc. If you ordered the item online, what about the web developer, the credit card processor, bandwith fees, and domain name ownership? 

Things like this just beg more questions than provide any real answers. Maybe a t-shirt should cost more than $6.70 to produce. What is a living wage? More importantly, what’s a wage that you would take for making something? Maybe t-shirts shouldn’t cost 15-20 dollars because it demonstrates that someone down the line isn’t getting paid fairly. 

To be honest that “$6.70 a shirt” price is only going to keep going up. And not just because of inflation. And it should. The rising middle class in China and other developing countries aren’t going to swallow getting paid a few dollars on the hour for too much longer. It’s the same reason why we don’t manufacture things like this in the United States anymore - people want to get paid enough to not only survive, but enjoy their lives. 

No one likes hearing justifications for things they find ‘overpriced’. But when’s the last time someone asked you how much your work is worth? Or questioned how much you get paid? 

#knowledge

Let’s all remember to tip our hats to Eunice (Unis) regarding this matter.

I’ve got an unprecedented amount of questions because of this infograph, mostly revolving around ‘why do you buy $100 shirts from Geller and Rick and Alex Wang when you can see what the mark up on them is’ - so, here. 

 Sure, its all fine and good for Everlane to put something out like this, but people need to realize that this is a biased marketing tactic and not some sort of reliable piece of information. This is not put together by some fashion equivalent of an anti-tobacco board, its put together by a company to sell their own brand of shirts. You can’t just generalize an entire section of the industry by saying ‘these are the prices of how much something costs’ and actually expect people to believe that. 

You have to remember that while this might be the method they use, not all designers use the same fabric, the same construction, the same labour, or the same anything. It all varies on a level of care and attention that each designer decides to put in or leave out of their clothing.  

Also, check out this exert from a NYTimes article last year about Band Of Outsiders notorious $550 Khakis 

“It sounds crazy to say this, I know, but our pants are a steal,” Mr. Sternberg said. To make his case, he gave a tour of the factory where they are made, Martin Greenfield in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where little has changed in the production of tailored clothing in a century.

A man was hovering over an 80-year-old contraption called a jump iron, hot enough to mold fabrics into shapes they will be unlikely to forget. Another man basted panels of suit fabric to springy canvas, which makes the garment more flexible. In a machine-made jacket, the canvas would be fused or glued into a suit.

Mr. Sternberg’s khakis are tailored like dress pants, and the details are largely sewn by hand, including buttonholes and split waistbands, which can be altered easily. The fabric, which costs $24 a yard, plus $3 a yard to import, is a cotton gabardine fine enough to withstand basting stitches. About two yards, counting for boo-boos and such, is used to make a pair of pants, so the fabric cost is $54.

At Martin Greenfield, a union shop where employees earn about $13 an hour, before benefits, it takes an average of four hours of labor to make a pair of pants. The pants pass through the hands of at least 20 people in the process of cutting fabric, adding pockets and building out a fly. So with labor and fabric, the cost to make Mr. Sternberg’s pants was about $110 — a fifth of what they cost in a store.

The final price reflects the markups of the designer and the retailer, what they charge to cover expenses, pay their employees and, with luck, make a profit on what sells to cover the losses on what does not. Mr. Sternberg doubles the cost to arrive at a wholesale price of $220. The retailer adds another markup, typically a factor of 2.5, which brings us to $550.

A machine might make pants more cheaply, Mr. Sternberg said, but for a designer who wants to be known for quality, what would be the value in that?

What Accounts For The $550 Pair Of Khakis - NYTimes

And sure, it sucks that companies like LV can use basic level cotton and maybe taper the sides a bit so that it fits a liiiiittle better, then charge $250 for it, but they’ve earned the right to do that through building their company up over the last 150+ years. So yeah, stitching their name on it makes it more valuable because it means that whoever is wearing it is going to get recognized as someone who is able to afford those next level jawnz and then people will think he has lots of money and girls will want to sleep with him. Welcome to the concept of luxury goods/the Layer Cake. 

(Source: everlane)