The revolution that has swept the food industry is expanding to retail: origins matter.
With fair-trade coffee and organic fruit now standard on grocery shelves, consumers concerned with working conditions, environmental issues and outsourcing are increasingly demanding similar accountability for their T-shirts. The issue has been brought to the forefront by the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than 800 people.
And some retailers are doing what was once unthinkable, handing over information about exactly how, and where, their products were made.
Everlane, an online boutique, last week added paragraphs to its Web site describing the factories where its products are made.
Nordstrom says it is considering adding information about clothes produced in humane working conditions.
An online boutique breaks down the number of workers involved in making each item and the cost of every component, while a textiles company intends to trumpet the fair-trade origins of its robes when Bed Bath & Beyond starts selling them this month.
And a group of major retailers and apparel companies, including some — like Nike and Walmart — with a history of controversial manufacturing practices overseas, says it is developing an index that will include labor, social and environmental measures.
New research indicates a growing consumer demand for information about how and where goods are produced. A study last year by professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard showed that some consumers — even those who were focused on discount prices — were not only willing to pay more, but actually did pay more, for clothes that carried signs about fair-labor practices.
“There’s real demand for sweat-free products,” said Ian Robinson, a lecturer and research scientist at the University of Michigan who studies labor issues. Consumers “don’t have the information they need, and they do care.”
The garment factory collapse that killed more than 800 workers in Bangladesh last month has added urgency to the movement, as retailers have seen queries stream in from worried customers.
“In the clothing industry, everybody wears it every day, but we have no idea where it comes from,” said Michael Preysman, Everlane’s chief executive and founder. “People are starting to slowly clue in to this notion of where products are made.”
Major retailers have long balked at disclosing the full trail, saying that sourcing is inherently complex — a sweater made in Italy may have thread, wool and dye from elsewhere. Another reason: Workplace protections are expensive, and cheap clothes, no matter where or how they are manufactured, still sell, as H&M, Zara and Joe Fresh show through their rapid expansion.
But labor advocates note that consumers’ appetite for more information may put competitive pressure on retailers who are less than forthcoming. In recent weeks, government officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and labor and consumer advocates have cited the Bangladesh collapse in calling for the adoption of fair-trade standards or labeling. In direct response to what happened in Bangladesh, Everlane added information to its Web site about the factories where its clothing is made. “This factory is located 10 minutes from our L.A. office,” one description for a T-shirt reads . “Mr. Kim, the owner, has been in the L.A. garment business for over 30 years.”
Everlane says it will soon add cost breakdowns for all of its clothing, along with photographs of factories where that clothing is made and information about the production.
Mr. Preysman says Everlane has long received questions from customers “around where the products are sourced from and how we can tell that the labor is good.” It is an inexact science, he said. But he added that he looks for factories certified by independent outside organizations and has executives spend time with a factory’s owner to see if he or she “is a decent human being.”
Honest By, a high-fashion site introduced last year, includes even more specific information about its products. Take a cotton shirt that costs about $320: it took 33 minutes to cut, 145 minutes to assemble and 10 minutes to iron at a Belgian factory, then the trim took an additional 10 minutes at a Slovenian plant. The safety pin cost 4 cents, and transportation about $10.50.
Bruno Pieters, the site’s founder, said by e-mail that “as long as we keep paying companies to be unsustainable and unethical, they will be.” But, he said, that may be changing. He cited a spike in sales that he asserted was in response to issues raised by recent overseas sourcing disasters.
Lush Cosmetics, a company based in Britain, has added video from its factories and photographs from buying trips to places like Kenya and Ghana to its Facebook page. Simon Constantine, head perfumer and ethical buyer, said he would like to add links to the factories Lush buys from, to encourage other cosmetics companies to support them.
Nordstrom said it had provided factory information in response to shoppers’ calls, and was considering going a step further, said Tara Darrow, a spokeswoman. The Nordstrom Web site specifies eco-friendly products, “so how can we do the same with people-friendly?” Ms. Darrow asked. “Hearing from customers and knowing they care definitely compels us to want to do more.”
A variety of groups are working on new apparel industry labor standards.
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which includes big names like Nike, Walmart, Gap, J. C. Penney and Target, has been testing an index called the Higg Index. It started last year with environmental goals, but the new version due this fall will include social and labor measurements.
The coalition was formed in 2011 to create one industry standard for sustainability and labor practices, rather than a patchwork approach. Some of the companies supporting this index have had sourcing problems — Walmart subcontractors were using the Tazreen factory, the Bangladesh plant where a fire killed 112 workers last November. Gap, Target and Penney produced clothing at another Bangladesh factory, where a fire killed about 30 workers in 2010. Nike, which faced a global boycott over sweatshop conditions in its overseas factories, was among the first major apparel companies pressured to disclose the factories it uses.
For now, the index is just for companies’ internal use. But Jason Kibbey, executive director of the coalition, said the goal was to give the information to shoppers, too, through a label or via the Web or apps. Labor advocates like Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, however, say that self-regulation may be ineffective.
Another certification, Fair Trade USA, began in coffee and only recently moved into apparel. PrAna, a yoga company that is among the first American apparel firms to be fair-trade certified, said the process included tours of its cut-and-sew plant in Liberia and other factories, a review of factory books and systems, and an assessment of workers’ pay relative to local salaries. PrAna sold one fair-trade T-shirt in 2011, and now sells nine such products.
Those products are priced 10 percent more than a comparable item, said its chief executive, Scott Kerslake, and they have been selling well, but PrAna has to be careful not to “completely chase away consumers on it” given the more expensive process. Now, it is trying to do more to alert consumers to the certification: the logo is only on PrAna’s tags, but it plans to put the certification logo on garments.
For some shoppers, the fair-trade pitch goes only so far. Marci Zaroff, founder of Under the Canopy, which is introducing a fair-trade certified bathrobe at Bed Bath & Beyond this month, said it could be hard to convey the message, and “that’s why we sell on style, quality and price.”
Neeru Paharia, an assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown, recently completed a study on consumers’ attitudes toward sweatshop labor. She found that the complex supply chain in retailing made it easier for consumers to justify poor labor practices.
“Most people probably would not hire a child, lock them in their basement, and have them make their clothes,” she said, “but this system is so abstracted.”
She also found that consumers were concerned with labor practices — as long as they were not that interested in buying a product like shoes. But “if the shoes are cute — if they like the shoes — they actually think sweatshop labor is less wrong,” she said.
The collapse in Bangladesh may be changing that. One look at the Facebook site of Joe Fresh, which produced clothing at that factory, suggests that customers are upset, and Joe Fresh’s parent, Loblaw Companies, has vowed to audit factories more aggressively and compensate the victims’ families. Shoppers like Lauri Langton, 62, of Seattle, plan to push retailers for more information. “You should be able to tell, right away, where the product is produced, so that you can walk away from the product and not buy it if you do not believe it was produced in a humane way,” she said. “That’s where we have power as consumers.”
Manufacturing is Sexy Again
in UncategorizedIrene Petrick thinks the next wave of manufacturers will come from unexpected sources — namely, from individuals and small businesses taking advantage of advances in technology.
While much of the conversation focused on hopes for the U.S. government’s future manufacturing policy and possible business incentives, Ms. Petrick focused on trends shaping manufacturing.
She predicted that there are three major trends that would inspire innovation on a more individualized level in the future: the availability of cloud-based services, which would allow people to download just the programs they need, the spread of high-performance computing, which would make simulations more available to small businesses, and 3-D printing, which would allow individuals to make their own products.
Sridhar Kota, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Michigan, echoed Ms. Petrick’s statements and said reducing costs and barriers to these types of tools would increase competitiveness in manufacturing.
Carl Pope, former executive director of the Sierra Club, said he thought the federal government needed to do more to encourage manufacturers to make their products in the United States. He called for policy certainty for the industry.
But the panelists thought there was cause for optimism in the U.S. manufacturing sector. Mr. Paul said there is a lot of support and interest in the sector from politicians, management consultants and academics. It’s time now to take the “emergency care” manufacturing policy to a more sustainable one, he said.
Ms. Petrick noted that she sees lots of interest in entrepreneurship now, and that people are tinkering in her classes.
“Manufacturing is sexy again,” she said.
Farming, Food Safety Groups Ask U.S. to Stop Smithfield Foods Sale
in UncategorizedTwo Nebraska groups — The Center for Rural Affairs and the Nebraska Farmers Union — are among food safety and farm groups calling on federal regulators to halt the proposed sale of pork giant Smithfield Foods to a Chinese processor — a deal that would represent China’s largest purchase of a U.S. company.
“The White House should reject the sale of America’s food supply,” Tim Gibbons of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, one of the groups involved, said in a statement released Tuesday. “The Smithfield purchase turns over American farms to a consolidated, globalized meatpacking industry that leaves rural communities to clean up the waste while China gets the meat.”
Smithfield is the nation’s biggest pork packer and also raises more hogs than any other company.
China is the U.S.’s third-largest pork export customer, buying more than 500,000 metric tons of pork a year. In 2012 the U.S. exported nearly a quarter of its pork, about 12 percent of it to China, where a growing middle class has increased demand for proteins of all kinds.
Shuanghui and Smithfield announced in late May that Shuanghui would purchase Virginia-based Smithfield, the world’s largest pork producer, for $4.7 billion. But since the announcement, some lawmakers and producers have cast a critical eye on the deal, and regulatory hurdles remain.
Smithfield’s chief executive, C. Larry Pope, is scheduled to testify Wednesday before the Senate Agriculture Committee. The chairwoman of that committee, Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., has been critical of the deal and has called for more government oversight from additional agencies, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Tuesday’s letter echoes some lawmakers’ objections, saying that the deal could pose threats to U.S. security interests, undermine food security here and threaten the safety of the U.S. food supply.
China’s consumers have faced a number of food-related scares in recent years, including reports of adulterated and mislabeled meats. A Shuanghui subsidiary was recently accused of treating hogs with an illegal veterinary drug that’s hazardous for humans.
“The deal has been promoted as a way to facilitate U.S. pork exports to China, but ultimately Shuanghui could export pork back to the United States,” the letter says. “The adoption of Smithfield hog genetics and processing technologies could allow Shuanghui to reverse the global flow of pork.”
Processed pork products, including ham, bacon and sausage, are exempt from mandatory country-of-origin labeling requirements, which could mean that American consumers might see familiar brands but remain unaware that they were imported from China, the letter said.
In Nebraska, Smithfield owns the Cook’s Ham plant in Lincoln, which employs almost 500 people; the Farmland Foods pork plant at Crete, which employs almost 2,000; and an Armour-Eckridge sausage plant in Omaha that employs almost 200.
The letter was signed by Campaign for Contract Agriculture Reform, Coalition for a Prosperous America, Center for Rural Affairs, Contract Poultry Growers Association of the Virginias, Food & Water Watch, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Land Stewardship Project, Missouri’s Best Beef Co-Operative, Missouri Farmers Union, Missouri Rural Crisis Center, National Family Farm Coalition, National Farmers Union, Nebraska Farmers Union, Organization for Competitive Markets, Rural Advancement Foundation International—USA, R-CALF USA and Western Organization of Resource Councils.
Wal-Mart to Pull Out of D.C. After Minimum-Wage Vote
in UncategorizedFor decades, Walmart has been known in the retail industry for its hard-line negotiating tactics. As the world’s largest retailer, it’s massive enough that it can offer to pay a ridiculously low price, threaten to walk unless its price is met, and watch suppliers trip over themselves to shrink their margins. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Walmart conducts its governmental relations the same way.
Lydia DiPillis at Wonkblog thinks there will be “negative consequences” from the D.C. city council’s decision to go ahead with the bill, whether it’s in the form of lower property taxes, missing multiplier effects, and abandoned sites where the Walmarts would have stood. She points out that D.C. residents may go to Walmarts in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs now, instead of in D.C. proper, and that the stores that have been scuttled were likely to have the lowest profit margins for Walmart anyway.
That may be true. But D.C.’s decision to ward off Walmart is still a victory. In an era when suppliers, governments, and municipalities have all been scared into acquiescing to Walmart because of its size and job-creating potential, it also took tremendous courage. D.C.’s council members knew how many jobs a Walmart could bring to town and how good creating those jobs would look on their political record. But they also knew that despite Walmart’s white-washing PR campaign, those jobs were likely to be barely subsistence-wage, terribly depressing, and offset with jobs lost at local businesses. D.C. didn’t prohibit Walmart from setting up stores in the district (and there will still be three, even after the abandoned ones), but it did put in place what amounted to a fairly expensive penalty for doing so.
Not all jobs are created equal. But in politics, they often get equal weight. It would have been easy for D.C.’s city council to bow to Walmart’s threat, repeal or soften the minimum-wage hike, and brag to constituents about their job-creating success. Instead, they made a brave, values-driven decision about what kinds of jobs they wanted in D.C. and set policy accordingly. That’s the right of every municipality, and it’s an impulse that should be exercised much more often.
Smithfield CEO: China Deal Won't Hurt Food Safety
in UncategorizedWASHINGTON — Congressional lawmakers grilled the top executive at pork giant Smithfield Foods Wednesday about how the proposed $4.7 billion purchase of the company by China’s largest meat producer might affect the U.S. food supply and agricultural producers.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for the U.S. to do what it does best: produce agriculture products and ship them around the world,” Pope told the Senate Agriculture Committee. “This is an opportunity for U.S. pork producers to grow.”
Pope said the merger would have “no noticeable impact on how we do business in America and around the world, except that we will do more of it.”
But committee members from both parties appeared unconvinced.
Lawmakers expressed concern the takeover would squeeze the U.S. pork supply by shipping more of the meat to China and leave the U.S. susceptible to food safety concerns that have plagued Chinese companies, including Shuanghui.
They also raised a host of other concerns, including what would happen to Smithfield’s intellectual property and the impact of the deal on U.S. agriculture producers.
“In the short term, I know this deal looks good for our producers. This also needs to be a good deal in the long-term,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., chairwoman of the Agriculture Committee. “One pork company alone might not be enough to affect our national security, but it’s our job to be thinking about the big picture and the long-term for American food security and economic security.”
Smithfield, founded in 1936 and based in Virginia, sells packaged products under its own name and other popular brands, including Farmland, Armour and Cook’s. The company, the world’s largest pork processor and hog producer, employs more than 46,000 people in 25 states and four countries.
Pope said the transaction would not lead to food imports from China. Instead, he said, it would open up the market for U.S. pork farmers by giving them more access to Shuanghui’s large distribution system and millions of meat-hungry consumers in China, South Korea, Japan and other Asian countries.
Smithfield has stressed repeatedly that the merged company would keep its current management and facilities in place and maintain existing relationships with U.S. pork producers. Pope made those points again Wednesday.
The deal, which would be the largest takeover of a U.S. company by a Chinese firm, is expected to close later this year. Shareholders and regulators, including the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS), which reviews such transactions for their impact on national security, must approve the merger.
Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and other lawmakers have called for the CFIUS review of the Smithfield deal to include the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration. Lawmakers met privately with CFIUS officials after Wednesday’s hearing to ask questions about the Smithfield merger and the notoriously secretive review process.
The proposed takeover of Smithfield has stoked growing concern about an influx of foreign investment in the United States. Many expect cash-rich China to be an active player in the future, much to the dismay of Washington lawmakers reluctant to cede control of U.S.-owned businesses to the communist country.
“I think it is reasonable for you to expect a wave of Chinese investments into our food and agriculture industry, and this potential purchase is not a one-off,” said Daniel Slane, a member of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a government agency that monitors trade and economic relationships between the two countries. “Today, it’s Smithfield, but tomorrow, it could be Consolidated Grain, ConAgra or Tyson Foods.”
Slane said Shuanghui likely views the deal as a way to help minimize the risk of volatile commodity prices and to obtain Smithfield’s valuable intellectual knowledge of meat processing and animal genetics.
“This is really all about control,” he said. “The Chinese could easily go out and buy pork.”
On Manufacturing and Innovation
in UncategorizedManufacturing was once widely recognized as the outstanding strength of America and the basis of its prosperity, but manufacturing also has a more recent history of being almost a pariah. This newer view equated computer chips with potato chips, asserted that manufacturing is better left to others, and suggested that the nation is actually fortunate to be losing manufacturing and aiming to replace it with design, research, and services.
With the 2012 elections over, discussion about manufacturing subsided and changed course, but did not go away. Today the doubts of the American people about the loss of manufacturing are being addressed in a different way. Since Americans can’t be persuaded that manufacturing doesn’t matter, they hear instead: “don’t worry, manufacturing is coming back.” Now we have a stream of news articles and studies, all announcing, on the flimsiest evidence, that manufacturing is returning to America. But this is closer to fiction than it is to fact.
Innovation, in contrast with manufacturing, seems immune to ups and downs. Day in and day out, innovation is everybody’s favorite. We hear over and over that America must innovate to survive, America must innovate to compete in the global economy, and that Americans can do it because Americans are inherently innovative.
This discussion of innovation has things fundamentally backwards. It does not make sense to talk about innovation as if innovation was an end in itself. We could innovate until the cows come home and if we can’t translate that innovation into something substantial that adds to the economic output of the United States, it does little for America. If our strategy is to generate new ideas that other countries acquire, either as the foundation of a new industry or to gain an advantage in an old one, we will have the expense and glory of being innovators, and they will have the resulting industries and the economic benefits.
But in this era of globalization, and of worldwide profit seeking, our global corporations are strongly motivated to move their manufacturing abroad, not only in response to the availability of cheap labor, but also in areas of high technology where cheap labor is not the attraction but foreign subsidies are. And manufacturing innovation goes abroad with manufacturing.
Innovation in manufacturing matters; innovation in manufacturing is what turns ideas into things that change the world. It took the steam engine 150 years of steady improvement to evolve from being something that barely worked into a machine powerful enough to create the industrial revolution. Sixty years of continuing transistor miniaturization has produced a cellphone you can carry in your shirt pocket with computing power that once required several large rooms to hold. And this cheap computing power is transforming the world.
In a less spectacular way the manufacturing of steel, of paper, or glass, or automobile tires, follow the same path. There are ideas, and then innovation in the manufacturing process steadily improves on them. Much of the progress, and the competition, in manufacturing, is based on incremental innovations whose cumulative effect is enormous. But manufacturing’s steady improvement also means that once you are out of an industry it’s hard to get back in. Your workers’ skills are out of date; the underlying networks of suppliers have gone out of business.
This picture of innovation — tied to manufacturing and incremental in nature — is very different from the popular picture of a few dedicated young programmers putting together a startup that sweeps the world. But it is this popular and easy and attractive picture of innovation that dominates many discussions about how to increase innovation in America.
Why can’t we just stick to this attractive startup picture? Do we really need the hard work of manufacturing and manufacturing innovation in America? We know we do need manufactured goods, they are a part of daily life, but isn’t there some other way to get the manufactured goods we need?
Here are the three ways we can get them: (1) produce them in America (2) trade something else we produce for them, or (3) buy them with dollars that don’t get spent on American goods, but simply remain in foreign hands as future claims on our economy. Today the third option is increasingly what we do.
The Chinese government, alone, now has more than two trillion dollars generated by these trade deficits, and this amount grows daily. This is an enormous resource, available whenever needed, to buy promising, or even full-grown, technology and companies. And who believes that in today’s world a buyer with two trillion to spend cannot wield major economic and even political power?
Despite this, many still proclaim that free trade benefits everyone and point as proof to lower prices for the imported Asian products. But lower prices are not low if you lose your job to get them, and the mutual gains predicted by free trade theory do not in fact materialize in a world where the well thought-out subsidies and controls of foreign governments create persistent trade deficits for our country.
We are allowing much of manufacturing, the great innovation engine that turns ideas into reality, to vanish quietly from our shores. Our global corporations may be benefitting from this; most Americans are not.
It is time for the steady wasting away of manufacturing, and the consequences of that wasting away, to become a matter for national debate, and to remain a matter for national debate, until the problem is resolved. Action is needed, and strong actions should be considered with a full understanding of the enormous importance of what is really happening.
About the author:
Ralph Gomory –
Research Prof. NYU, Pres. Emeritus, Alfred P Sloan Foundation, Former IBM SVP Science-Tech
If This Is a Good Jobs Report, Just Shoot Me
in UncategorizedIs this the picture of a healthy economic superpower?
The report shows summer is here: time to plant a garden, fix up the house and work on the car!
Debt collectors hired 6,000 and temp services added 10,000.
And the number of workers who want full-time jobs but are stuck in part-time jobs increased by 322,000.
The bright spots in the report are dim: 13,000 jobs added in construction (divide that by fifty and you see about 250 per state) and 5,000 in automotive manufacturing.
CNN says ‘June jobs report: Hiring beats expectations.’
It’s the bigotry of low expectations.
Read the BLS report here:
Fatal Fashion: Movement Seeks Way To Change Global Clothing Production
in UncategorizedBut now, in the wake of the tragedies, a new movement is being stitched together to change the way our T-shirts, tops and trousers are made and labeled.
Global sellers such as Wal-Mart are signing on with groups like LaborVoices that promise to get more candid assessments of factory conditions. Bangladesh’s government is being prodded by the United States and others to beef up worker safety. U.S. clothing companies are working on a new labeling system that will track a garment’s manufacturing history.
And many consumers are starting to take a closer look at where their clothing comes from.
Read more at The Kansas City Star: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/07/08/4334567/fatal-fashion-movement-seeks-way.html
The Decline Of America's Job-Creating Small Businesses
in UncategorizedOne of the reasons for this is the decline of America’s small businesses, which struggle to compete against the scale of the world’s multi-national, multi-billion dollar corporations.
Here’s Nathan Sheets, Citi’s Global Head of International Economics:
Steinway's Sale Is a Sour Note for Made in America
in UncategorizedKohlberg & Co. is a leveraged buyout firm (LBO). LBOs do not generally invest in companies to turn around management and run them more profitably. They look for high returns on the acquisition by finding buyers who will pay significantly more for the profitable parts of the company than its present sum. They also, by taking a public company private prior to its sale to foreign entities, remove much of the public scrutiny of the sale by shareholders, the Securities and Exchange Commission or other governmental entities, and the media that the transaction might generate.
With its rising affluence from its enormous economic prosperity, piano sales in China have been booming. In 2010, 43,778 pianos were made in the United States. China, by contrast made well over 60,000.
The last half decade has been hard on the musical instrument industry. The Great Recession in the United States made luxury items like pianos and the high-end brass and woodwind instruments of Steinway’s other brands, Selmer and Conn, less appealing.
As the economy in the United States comes back, Steinway sales have improved. With prices ranging from the low $60,000’s to as high as $282,000, though, the brand revered by the world’s greatest musicians, music schools, and those who love to play the instrument is finding it harder to sell status-symbol pianos to a new generation of Americans for whom playing music usually means pushing a button on their iPhone or Android, and whose musical tastes increasingly shift from classical and acoustic popular music to largely electronic instruments and sounds.
The musical arts in the United States are under pressure. Cuts to funding of musical programs in schools, and federal funds for the arts are constantly the target of thrifty Tea Party congressmen. Young people seeking big money in the entertainment industry generally don’t see being the next “piano man” as their ticket to stardom.
By contrast, many Chinese families, inspired by home-grown piano phenoms like Lang Lang, who has rock-star status there and a growing international fame, see their children’s mastery of the piano as a ticket to global greatness and financial prosperity.
So it is no wonder that Kohlberg potentially sees an opportunity to vend the venerable Steinway name to Chinese piano manufacturers eager to bring the manufacture of the iconic piano in world music to their shores.
Steinway is also the owner and steward of the great French Selmer brand of woodwinds and Conn’s brass instruments. Those companies would likely find eager buyers in Asia as well.
Steinway, based in Waltham, Massachusetts, celebrated its 160th year as an American piano maker in March of 2013. The company sold its flagship 57th Street store in Manhattan this year to a partnership fronted by JDS Development Group for $46.3 million in cash.
The arts, and the equipment that supply them, are perhaps America’s greatest export. With Hollywood companies altering films for the Chinese market to chase billions in box office there, and the Chinese possibly buying up our cultural icons like Steinway, it is only a matter of time before we lose our second biggest export after foodstuffs.
There is a period where Steinway can seek another buyer over the next forty-five days during a “go shop” period. If no American buyer steps up, our most iconic American musical brand will cease being “made in America,” and our leadership in yet another area of craftsmenship, economics and nearly two centuries of American musical excellence will possibly be dealt to China for the short-term gain of a few million dollars.
Steinway is worth more than that to America. The deal should be stopped.
My shiny two.
Gillibrand: Sell Only 'Made in USA' Wares at National Park Sites
in UncategorizedThey note the National Park Service reports one-quarter — $250 million — of its $1 billion annual gross receipts is from merchandise.
Read the rest of the article at SILive.com: http://www.silive.com/news/index.ssf/2013/07/gillibrand_sell_only_made_in_t.html
MADE IN AMERICA: 10 DESIGNERS AND BRANDS THAT MANUFACTURE LOCALLY
in UncategorizedVisit Stylecaster and check out the photos curated and posted by Meghan Blalock listing the 10 designers and labels that still produce in the U.S.A.! http://stylecaster.com/fashion-brands-made-in-america/
94 Percent Of American Flags Imported Into The U.S. Last Year Came From China
in Manufacturing“Honestly I think it’s growing every year. We see the trend primarily happening with online businesses,” Binner, whose company is a founding member of the Flag Manufacturers Association of America, said. “It’s understandable. A flag and stick flags in particular are very easy to ship.”
Is your flag Made in USA? Read the rest of this article at Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/03/american-flags-china_n_3540287.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ncid=edlinkusaolp00000008
Apparel Manufacturing Reshoring to USA
in UncategorizedIn the past few years, major designers and retailers such as Brooks Bros. and Saks, as well as dozens of smaller companies, have moved some production from foreign countries to the U.S., creating perhaps 1,000 jobs.
That’s minuscule compared with the 800,000 jobs lost to foreign clothing factories since 1990. Yet it’s raising hopes that the trend will grow, even though garment production remains highly labor-intensive and U.S. manufacturers still face stiff competition from low-wage countries in Asia and elsewhere.
Asian factory wages, however, are rising rapidly and U.S. consumers have shown a willingness to pay more for Made-in-America products.
Read the rest of the USA Today article at:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/04/some-apparel-manufacturing-returns-to-us/2454075/
The Made in America Movement All American-Made July 4th Giveaway – Day 3
in UncategorizedAll products have been generously donated by our Made in America Movement Members and Sponsors. (MAM Members)
Rules for entry:
(1) Enter via Rafflecopter widget below. (There are three entries for each gift. It may seem overwhelming, but it’s really quite easy. )
(2) Comment at the bottom of this BLOG
(3) Please SHARE blog link EVERWHERE and use hashtag #MAM1776
Giveaway begins Wednesday, 07/03 at 6PM EST. It will run for 24hrs ending Thursday, 07/04 at 6pm EST. One winner will be chosen at random. Winner’s name will be posted at 7pm EST. Email will be sent. Winner will have 24hrs to get in touch with us, otherwise prize will go to runner up.
We want to keep our giveaways flexible and allow our readers to enter in whatever ways they are most comfortable. There are a lot of entry options below, but don’t be overwhelmed. The FACEBOOK likes are required and so are the Newsletter subscriptions. The Twitter follows are not… however, the more entry options you complete, the better the chances you’ll be a winner!!!
This giveaway will close at 6pm EST on Thursday 07/04. The winner will be randomly selected, verified for correct entry participation, and notified by email. Winner will have 24hrs to respond. If winner does not respond, a runner up will be chosen at random.
ENTER TO WIN
THE MADE IN AMERICA MOVEMENT
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4TH OF JULY GIVEAWAY
Buy America Laws Raise Hurdles in European Talks
in Uncategorized“My thought was: what faster way to create jobs here, and bring jobs back, than if we made products in America again,” says Mr Young, 72, speaking from his district office in downtown Frederick, an hour’s drive northwest of Washington.
General government procurement accounts for more than 10 per cent of economic output in the US, according to the OECD, the Paris based group of countries that tries to promote growth. So a proliferation of Buy America bills – similar to the one supported by Mr Young, which requires Maryland to choose domestically produced products over foreign ones where possible – are barriers that European officials would like to see removed in trade talks, due to begin next month.
“What we are trying to establish in these negotiations is free trade – we’re not going to be able to do that everywhere but that is the general objective – and that means not discriminating between European goods or services and their American counterparts,” says an EU official in Washington. “This is an issue for us because in Europe we have used procurement as an instrument to open up trade between member states, and in doing that we haven’t discriminated against foreigners.”
According to the National Foreign Trade Council (NFTC), a US business lobby that tracks state-level Buy America legislation, there has been a fourfold increase in such measures this year, from five bills introduced in 2012 to more than 20 in 2013. New Buy America measures were passed in Ohio last year. And this year, aside from Maryland, similar bills have come close to being approved in other states and may move forward next year. The state Senate in Maine passed its own version of Buy America this month, while Texas last month approved a bill applicable to water projects.
The flurry of Buy America bills presents a dilemma for the Obama administration in the trade talks. On one hand, US trade negotiations could use them to seek a carve-out for US procurement in retaliation for exemptions sought by the EU, such as France’s demand to protect its film industry. On the other hand, it could put the US on the defensive, making it harder for Washington to argue for more liberalisation in Europe, not just on procurement but other areas such as data privacy and agriculture.
Typically, it is the US trade representative’s job to ratchet up support among state governments to agree to trade deals but it is unclear whether that will be successful. Many trade unions, which are a critical component of the political base for Barack Obama’s Democratic party, support Buy America legislation at both the federal and the state level. They are already sceptical of trade deals and their opposition might flare up if there were an aggressive attempt to open up procurement, posing a problem for any deal to be approved on Capitol Hill.
US business groups are mounting their own powerful campaign against Buy America, arguing that state level efforts could limit the scope of trade talks and stop American companies competing for government contracts in Europe. “If ‘Buy America’ bills continue to proliferate, the Europeans will say – ‘now wait a minute, we’re not going to give you Bavaria unless you give us Ohio’,” says Dan O’Flaherty, vice-president at the NFTC.
Bob Walker, Maryland’s deputy secretary of business and economic development, says: “My personal view is you have to be very careful to balance those good intentions [to promote domestic suppliers] with what might be the negative impact on your trade with other countries.”
Back in Frederick, Mr Young’s biggest worry is not that the Maryland legislation could harm US-EU trade talks but that it needs to be tougher, citing caveats added to the final version of the bill. For instance, foreign products can be bought by the state if they are less expensive, of better quality, or more widely available than US equivalents.
Mr Young is defiant about ensuring that the bill survives as Brussels and Washington begin their negotiations. “A huge amount of countries around the world have protectionist stuff to stop us from competing,” Mr Young says. “Our biggest threat is not Europe but I do think we need balance.”
Does China own Independence Day?
in UncategorizedMuch like the other 364 days of the year, July 4 finds the American dollar going to products and goods made in China. But what adds a special sting to this particular day is its ironic dependence on a foreign country to commemorate our autonomy.
Starting with the very hallmark of the holiday — the emblem of our freedom, the subject of our national anthem, that gallantly streaming symbol to which we pledge our allegiance, an object so sacred that its public desecration is a misdemeanor offense — the American flag, well…isn’t.
Of the $3.6 million worth of stars and stripes imported every year to the US, $3.3 million worth comes from China. They flutter, not just over our front porches, but over our government buildings — even the federal ones. The farming out of our flags has become so pervasive that the House of Representatives is trying to pass a law requiring the feds to keep purchases strictly domestic.
Going down the holiday shopping list, those disposable dishes, utensils, cups, napkins, and tablecloths are largely outsourced to China — squaring with the U.S. trade deficit totaling $62 billion in paper, plastic, and wood products to the country. And if Congress allows the world’s largest pork producer, Smithfield Foods, Inc., to be purchased by Shuanghui International, the Chinese will be processing our hot dogs for next year’s Independence Day cookout — right atop our Chinese-made outdoor grills.
For some Fourth of July fun, American families will no doubt participate in one of our favorite national pastimes, but playing catch with a Rawlings minor league or consumer baseball is another home run for Chinese manufacturing. Tossing the Frisbee? That American cultural touchstone — along with the Hula-Hoop, Silly String, and the Slip ‘N Slide — hasn’t belonged to Wham-O since the iconic toy company was bought out by Hong Kong group Cornerstone Overseas Investments Ltd. in 2006.
When the sun goes down, our “great anniversary Festival,” as John Adams called it, is capped off with “Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.” Macy’s annual televised extravaganza is still homegrown by California-based Pyro Spectaculars by Souza, but fireworks from China — despite their failure to pass U.S. safety controls — are making record profits for the country’s manufacturers. In 2011, Chinese pyrotechnics were the overwhelming majority of all American-imported fireworks at $223.6 million out of a total of $232.5 million.
Perhaps we should return to celebrating the Declaration of Independence with the pomp of military parades. Well, not only are Chinese factories churning out our service members’ uniforms, but defense contractors like Raytheon, L-3 Communications, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin are making our weapons with Chinese parts — and counterfeit ones at that.
And when the U.S. markets open the morning after, it might be events in China that will determine how well our S&P 500 performs — as recent history has taught us.
If we don’t like it, we can always go cry to our George Washington bobble-heads — courtesy of you-know-who.
The Made in America Movement All American-Made July 4th Giveaway Day 2
in UncategorizedAll products have been generously donated by our Made in America Movement Members and Sponsors. (MAM Members)
Rules for entry:
(1) Enter via Rafflecopter widget below.
It may seem overwhelming, but it’s really quite easy.
(2) Comment at the bottom of this BLOG
(3) Please SHARE blog link EVERWHERE and use hashtag #MAM1776
Giveaway begins Tuesday, 07/02 at 6PM EST. It will run for 24hrs ending Wednesday, 07/03 at 6pm EST. One winner will be chosen at random. Winner’s name will be posted at 7pm EST. Email will be sent. Winner will have 24hrs to get in touch with us, otherwise prize will go to runner up.
TELIC FOOTWEAR
HOOSIER DADDY
K’NEX
BODACIOUS CASES
US of AWESOME
We want to keep our giveaways flexible and allow our readers to enter in whatever ways they are most comfortable. There are a lot of entry options below, but don’t be overwhelmed. The FACEBOOK likes are required and so are the Newsletter subscriptions. The Twitter follows are not… however, the more entry options you complete, the better the chances you’ll be a winner!!!
This giveaway will close at 6pm EST on Wednesday 07/03. The winner will be randomly selected, verified for correct entry participation, and notified by email. Winner will have 24hrs to respond. If winner does not respond, a runner up will be chosen at random.
ALL AMERICAN
JULY 4TH GIVEAWAY
MTA Outsources $235M Verrazano Bridge Project to China
in UncategorizedThe Metropolitan Transportation Authority outsourced a $235 million renovation project to China for work on the statuesque steel span — over the protests of hard-up American steelworkers who say they could do the job.
“It’s a kick in the teeth. There’s a lot of New Yorkers who would be thrilled to work on this project. It should be American made,” United Steelworkers’ Vice President Tom Conway said.
The union has reached out to New York’s AFL-CIO to mobilize support among other labor organizations, the Daily News has learned.
“Our state has lost nearly half its manufacturing capacity in the past 20 years,” AFL-CIO head Mario Cilento said in a letter sent July 1 to its executive council.
According to the MTA, there’s not a steel plant in America that can produce the type of high-tech steel plate it wants — known as orthotropic design.
“(The agency) worked diligently to find an American steel manufacturer with the capability, experience and desire to fabricate the steel bridge deck … the MTA could not find an American fabricator,” the agency said in a statement defending its decision.
Orthotropic design is rarely used in America because the bulk of U.S. bridges were built before the technology existed.
The MTA hopes to extend the Verrazano’s lifespan by replacing its heavy concrete upper deck with lighter, stiffer orthotropic plates. Similar work was done two years ago on another U.S. span, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
“We were good enough then, but now all that work will go to China, to a government-owned company,” the union veep said.
“Maybe we’ll get some work tying up the barges” that haul the steel from China, he added bitterly.
The MTA said it will have strict quality-control tests to make sure the Chinese steel meets U.S. safety guidelines and requirements. Production has already started, the agency said.
Once the finished Chinese-made steel plates are shipped back, American workers will reassemble the Verrazano’s upper deck.
The real issue is money, he said.
“This job here is about $30 an hour. In China, the workers will get anywhere from $10 to $15 a day,” he said.
It would cost another $100 million to keep the project in America, the MTA said.
Cilento said the agency “should be ashamed of itself” for the blatant outsourcing.
“It is incomprehensible that the MTA would award a $235 million project to China when there are American workers ready, willing and able to perform the task,” he said.
The Made in America Movement All American Made July 4th Giveaway
in UncategorizedAll products have been generously donated by our Made in America Movement Members and Sponsors. (MAM Members)
Rules for entry:
(1) Enter via Rafflecopter widget below.
It may seem overwhelming, but it’s really quite easy.
(2) Comment at the bottom of this BLOG
(3) Please SHARE blog link EVERWHERE and use hashtag #MAM1776
Giveaway begins Monday, 07/01 at 6PM EST. It will run for 24hrs ending Tuesday, 07/02 at 6pm EST. One winner will be chosen at random. Winner’s name will be posted at 7pm EST. Email will be sent. Winner will have 24hrs to get in touch with us, otherwise prize will go to runner up.
US of Awesome
Bodacious Cases
TELIC FOOTWEAR
K’NEX
We want to keep our giveaways flexible and allow our readers to enter in whatever ways they are most comfortable. There are a lot of entry options below, but don’t be overwhelmed. The FACEBOOK likes are required and so are the Newsletter subscriptions. The Twitter follows are not… however, the more entry options you complete, the better the chances you’ll be a winner!!!
This giveaway will close at 6pm EST on Tuesday 07/02. The winner will be randomly selected, verified for correct entry participation, and notified by email. Winner will have 24hrs to respond. If winner does not respond, a runner up will be chosen at random.
JULY 4TH GIVEAWAY
Volkswagen Opens News Tennessee Distribution to Keep Up with US Demand
in UncategorizedThe 459,000-plus square-foot facility will be used for distributing domestic auto parts to global markets for the Chattanooga-made Passat.
The Center facility will begin as a redistribution center to service warehouses and will later expand to include a parts distribution center. The redistribution Master Depot will support the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Germany.
Read the rest of the article at Industry Week: http://www.industryweek.com/expansion-management/volkswagen-opens-news-tennessee-distribution-keep-us-demand
American Made Makes a Comeback at Wal-Mart
in UncategorizedYet that’s typical of the time it takes to move manufactured goods from a factory in China to a store shelf in the United States, according to Hal Sirkin, senior partner with Boston Consulting Group, speaking at Wal-Mart Stores’ annual shareholders meeting events this month in Arkansas.
One solution, Sirkin suggests, is not to wait for boats but to buy products made closer to home. Wal-Mart is supporting such efforts with a goal announced earlier this year to increase its purchase of goods manufactured in the United States by $50 billion over the next 10 years.
The commitment to buying more U.S.-made products tests — but ultimately supports — Wal-Mart’s famous devotion to everyday low costs, according to Michelle Gloeckler, senior vice president of Walmart home goods who is heading the manufacturing project for Walmart U.S.
“It’s important to know that while this is a U.S. manufacturing commitment it is also doing good for our business,” Gloeckler explained. “Some of the things that have come out from this are terrific technology and collaboration.”
According to Sirkin, several factors have contributed to make manufacturing efficient enough again to move to the U.S. — chiefly, steep labor inflation in China and cheaper energy in the U.S. Combined with costs for transportation, duties, and the impact of a long supply chain, Sirkin predicts costs to manufacture goods by 2015 will be less in the U.S. than in China — and gaining as more retailers and manufacturers take on a similar challenge.
“Three years ago people thought it was impossible. But today we see people moving manufacturing back to the United States,” Sirkin said. “Not because they are patriots, but because it’s good business.”
Gloeckler said Wal-Mart would endeavor to meet its commitment by growing business from its existing U.S.-based suppliers; adding new U.S. suppliers; and by buying from existing manufacturers who shift production from current facilities to the U.S.
Hanna’s Candle Co., a candle maker based in Fayetteville, Ark., did $4 million in sales at Wal-Mart stores in 2012. The partners are targeting $30 million this year, Gloeckler said.
Elsewhere in the home category, Wal-Mart added a new supplier, Georgia-based Authentic Comfort, to replace a foreign supplier of the 1.5-inch memory foam mattress pads at its stores. The change represents around 20% of the category.
“We had to prove ourselves and our product,” Michael Rothbard, president and chief executive officer of Authentic Comfort, said. “We had to show the product was unique, had meaningful benefits and could offer great value. We also had to show we were capable of meeting Wal-Mart’s needs.”
This meant improving the efficiency of its processes and changing the product to reduce costs, Rothbard said. For example, the company removed a cloth covering on its pads that translated to a $20 to $30 extra charge at retail.
Products made in the U.S. are marked with special tags at Wal-Mart and have benefited from a warm shopper reception, Gloeckler said.
“We have research that says, yes, this is an attractive proposition,” she said. “Customers will buy more because of ‘Made in the U.S.’ We even have research that says customers will pay more for ‘Made in the U.S.’ but we don’t believe they should have to.”
Other benefits of using U.S.-based suppliers include the ability to respond faster to changes in the marketplace and manage inventories and store shelves with more precision by buying in appropriate quantities.
“From an economic standpoint, [proximity to suppliers] can mean I’m able to put the product on the shelf faster when it’s moving faster, or conversely, if it’s not selling at the rate we expected, I’m not sitting on a whole warehouse of inventory because I had to fill up a [shipping] container.”
Rothbard said business with Wal-Mart has created a ripple effect, with its suppliers of materials and packaging also realizing benefits.
Gloeckler said Wal-Mart has invited state governors, economic development professionals, suppliers and other retailers to a summit later this summer to discuss opportunities to expand relationships with domestic suppliers. For now, the company is looking for U.S.-based suppliers in particular categories of goods best suited for domestic manufacturing, saying highly automated, mass-produced products are most appropriate given labor cost disparity overseas.
Bangladesh Decries U.S. Cutoff of Duty-Free Access
in UncategorizedThe decision is “shocking for the factory workers,” Bangladesh’s foreign ministry declared in a statement, accusing “a section of people” in both countries of having campaigned for the cutoff.
“We’re committed to working with our U.S. counterparts and we hope this suspension will be lifted very quickly,” commerce secretary Mahbub Ahmed told The Wall Street Journal. His government, he said, has taken steps to amend the labor law to allow workers to unionize freely, formed a ministerial committee to ensure factory compliance and pushed through an agreement among the government, factory owners and workers to ensure worker rights.
The suspension, due to begin in two months, is regarded as largely symbolic… Read the rest of the article at The Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323873904578572852012416298.html
Ford F-150 Beats Toyota Camry in American Made Ranking
in UncategorizedFord’s F-Series trucks have propelled the biggest U.S. sales increase among major automakers this year, climbing 22 percent through the end of May. The automaker said last month that it’s adding 2,000 workers and a third shift at its F-150 factory in Missouri to increase pickup production beginning in the third quarter. The F-150 also is assembled at a plant in Dearborn, Michigan, where the company is based.
“Ford’s top ranking this year is a good indicator of how pickup trucks are dominating auto sales so far in 2013, and how the domestic automakers are bouncing back,” Patrick Olsen, Cars.com’s editor-in-chief, said in the statement.
Read the rest of this article at Bloomberg News:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-25/ford-f-150-tops-toyota-camry-in-american-made-ranking.html
Top US States for New Manufacturing Jobs
in UncategorizedAnd since January of 2010, the United States has added 520,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are currently 12 million manufacturing jobs on record in the United States.
But the U.S. is clearly in catch-up mode.
A report released last year by Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) said that manufacturing in the U.S. declined more in the last decade than it did in the Great Depression.
The ITIF says that translates into some 5.7 million lost jobs in manufacturing— at an “average loss of 1,276 manufacturing jobs every day for the past 12 years.”
In fact, in January 2012 there were more unemployed Americans (12.8 million) than there were Americans who worked in manufacturing (just under 12 million) the ITIF said.
“We are never going to see manufacturing in this country like it was before,” said Tony Cherin, a finance professor emeritus at San Diego State University. “We’ve become a more service and information industry economy, and while manufacturing is still important, it doesn’t carry the weight it once did.”
Where The Jobs Are
Read the rest of the article at CNBC: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100832195
Lawmakers Push Government: Buy American Flags From Domestic Companies
in UncategorizedIt’s believed that about $3.6 million dollars worth of American flags are imported every year, $3.3 million worth coming from China.
Read more at Business Insider: http://www.businessinsider.com/american-flags-china-made-lawmakers-2013-6
Made in USA: Journey Behind the Label
in NewsHe decided to set out on a 30-day road trip across the United States in search of answers for how to revive American manufacturing – all the while trying to survive on only goods and products stamped with “Made in USA.”
“I really thought that I could take this opportunity to give the Made in America movement and these folks a voice,” said Miller, who documented his trip in a film, “Made in the USA: The 30 Day Journey.”
Read the rest of the interview and watch the video clip here: Yahoo News
Made in USA Documentary Shows Power Behind Patriotic Production
in NewsIt’s a global economy we live in, and even a wizened tailor who specializes in hand-crafted suits relies on materials produced overseas.
Read the rest of the article here —> Breibart Big Hollywood
Facebook: Made in The USA: The 30 Day Journey
Youtube: Josh Miller
Twitter: @USA30DAYS
Google: Josh Miller
PuraKai Launches 100% Made in USA ‘Seed to Shirt’
in UncategorizedThe duo recently launched a Kickstarter project to produce Made in America clothing from California grown organic cotton. As Noel (the father) stated, “What we’re doing is creating a 100% USA based supply chain for Ocean Friendly organic cotton clothing that goes from the seed all the way to the shirt.
Read more: Fibre2Fashion.com
The Made in America Movement All American Made Father’s Day Giveaway
in NewsWe are giving away 13 awesome prizes. $860 worth of American made products will go to ONE lucky dad this weekend. Will it be yours?
All prizes have been generously donated by our Made in America Movement Members and Sponsors. (MAM Members)
Rules for entry:
(1) Enter via Rafflecopter widget below.
It may seem overwhelming, but it’s really quite easy.
(2) Comment at the bottom of this BLOG
(3) SHARE blog link on your wall (via Facebook)
The more you share this link, the better your chances are to win.
Giveaway begins Friday, 06/14 at 7PM EST. It will run for 48hrs ending Sunday, 06/16 at 7pm EST. One winner will be chosen at random. Winner’s name will be posted at 8pm EST. Email will be sent. Winner will have 24hrs to get in touch with us, otherwise prize will go to runner up.
We want to keep our giveaways flexible and allow our readers to enter in whatever ways they are most comfortable. There are a LOT of entry options below, but don’t be overwhelmed. The FACEBOOK likes are required and so are the Newsletter subscriptions. The Twitter follows are not… however, the more entry options you complete, the more chances you’ll have to win.
This giveaway will close at 7pm EST on 06/16. The winner will be randomly selected, verified for correct entry participation, and notified by email. Winner will have 24hrs to respond. If winner does not respond, a runner up will be chosen at random.
All American
Father’s Day Giveaway
GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE!
Some Retailers Say More About Their Clothing’s Origins
in NewsWith fair-trade coffee and organic fruit now standard on grocery shelves, consumers concerned with working conditions, environmental issues and outsourcing are increasingly demanding similar accountability for their T-shirts. The issue has been brought to the forefront by the garment factory collapse in Bangladesh, which killed more than 800 people.
And some retailers are doing what was once unthinkable, handing over information about exactly how, and where, their products were made.
Everlane, an online boutique, last week added paragraphs to its Web site describing the factories where its products are made.
Nordstrom says it is considering adding information about clothes produced in humane working conditions.
An online boutique breaks down the number of workers involved in making each item and the cost of every component, while a textiles company intends to trumpet the fair-trade origins of its robes when Bed Bath & Beyond starts selling them this month.
And a group of major retailers and apparel companies, including some — like Nike and Walmart — with a history of controversial manufacturing practices overseas, says it is developing an index that will include labor, social and environmental measures.
New research indicates a growing consumer demand for information about how and where goods are produced. A study last year by professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard showed that some consumers — even those who were focused on discount prices — were not only willing to pay more, but actually did pay more, for clothes that carried signs about fair-labor practices.
“There’s real demand for sweat-free products,” said Ian Robinson, a lecturer and research scientist at the University of Michigan who studies labor issues. Consumers “don’t have the information they need, and they do care.”
The garment factory collapse that killed more than 800 workers in Bangladesh last month has added urgency to the movement, as retailers have seen queries stream in from worried customers.
“In the clothing industry, everybody wears it every day, but we have no idea where it comes from,” said Michael Preysman, Everlane’s chief executive and founder. “People are starting to slowly clue in to this notion of where products are made.”
Major retailers have long balked at disclosing the full trail, saying that sourcing is inherently complex — a sweater made in Italy may have thread, wool and dye from elsewhere. Another reason: Workplace protections are expensive, and cheap clothes, no matter where or how they are manufactured, still sell, as H&M, Zara and Joe Fresh show through their rapid expansion.
But labor advocates note that consumers’ appetite for more information may put competitive pressure on retailers who are less than forthcoming. In recent weeks, government officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, and labor and consumer advocates have cited the Bangladesh collapse in calling for the adoption of fair-trade standards or labeling. In direct response to what happened in Bangladesh, Everlane added information to its Web site about the factories where its clothing is made. “This factory is located 10 minutes from our L.A. office,” one description for a T-shirt reads . “Mr. Kim, the owner, has been in the L.A. garment business for over 30 years.”
Everlane says it will soon add cost breakdowns for all of its clothing, along with photographs of factories where that clothing is made and information about the production.
Mr. Preysman says Everlane has long received questions from customers “around where the products are sourced from and how we can tell that the labor is good.” It is an inexact science, he said. But he added that he looks for factories certified by independent outside organizations and has executives spend time with a factory’s owner to see if he or she “is a decent human being.”
Honest By, a high-fashion site introduced last year, includes even more specific information about its products. Take a cotton shirt that costs about $320: it took 33 minutes to cut, 145 minutes to assemble and 10 minutes to iron at a Belgian factory, then the trim took an additional 10 minutes at a Slovenian plant. The safety pin cost 4 cents, and transportation about $10.50.
Bruno Pieters, the site’s founder, said by e-mail that “as long as we keep paying companies to be unsustainable and unethical, they will be.” But, he said, that may be changing. He cited a spike in sales that he asserted was in response to issues raised by recent overseas sourcing disasters.
Lush Cosmetics, a company based in Britain, has added video from its factories and photographs from buying trips to places like Kenya and Ghana to its Facebook page. Simon Constantine, head perfumer and ethical buyer, said he would like to add links to the factories Lush buys from, to encourage other cosmetics companies to support them.
Nordstrom said it had provided factory information in response to shoppers’ calls, and was considering going a step further, said Tara Darrow, a spokeswoman. The Nordstrom Web site specifies eco-friendly products, “so how can we do the same with people-friendly?” Ms. Darrow asked. “Hearing from customers and knowing they care definitely compels us to want to do more.”
A variety of groups are working on new apparel industry labor standards.
The Sustainable Apparel Coalition, which includes big names like Nike, Walmart, Gap, J. C. Penney and Target, has been testing an index called the Higg Index. It started last year with environmental goals, but the new version due this fall will include social and labor measurements.
The coalition was formed in 2011 to create one industry standard for sustainability and labor practices, rather than a patchwork approach. Some of the companies supporting this index have had sourcing problems — Walmart subcontractors were using the Tazreen factory, the Bangladesh plant where a fire killed 112 workers last November. Gap, Target and Penney produced clothing at another Bangladesh factory, where a fire killed about 30 workers in 2010. Nike, which faced a global boycott over sweatshop conditions in its overseas factories, was among the first major apparel companies pressured to disclose the factories it uses.
For now, the index is just for companies’ internal use. But Jason Kibbey, executive director of the coalition, said the goal was to give the information to shoppers, too, through a label or via the Web or apps. Labor advocates like Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, however, say that self-regulation may be ineffective.
Another certification, Fair Trade USA, began in coffee and only recently moved into apparel. PrAna, a yoga company that is among the first American apparel firms to be fair-trade certified, said the process included tours of its cut-and-sew plant in Liberia and other factories, a review of factory books and systems, and an assessment of workers’ pay relative to local salaries. PrAna sold one fair-trade T-shirt in 2011, and now sells nine such products.
Those products are priced 10 percent more than a comparable item, said its chief executive, Scott Kerslake, and they have been selling well, but PrAna has to be careful not to “completely chase away consumers on it” given the more expensive process. Now, it is trying to do more to alert consumers to the certification: the logo is only on PrAna’s tags, but it plans to put the certification logo on garments.
For some shoppers, the fair-trade pitch goes only so far. Marci Zaroff, founder of Under the Canopy, which is introducing a fair-trade certified bathrobe at Bed Bath & Beyond this month, said it could be hard to convey the message, and “that’s why we sell on style, quality and price.”
Neeru Paharia, an assistant professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown, recently completed a study on consumers’ attitudes toward sweatshop labor. She found that the complex supply chain in retailing made it easier for consumers to justify poor labor practices.
“Most people probably would not hire a child, lock them in their basement, and have them make their clothes,” she said, “but this system is so abstracted.”
She also found that consumers were concerned with labor practices — as long as they were not that interested in buying a product like shoes. But “if the shoes are cute — if they like the shoes — they actually think sweatshop labor is less wrong,” she said.
The collapse in Bangladesh may be changing that. One look at the Facebook site of Joe Fresh, which produced clothing at that factory, suggests that customers are upset, and Joe Fresh’s parent, Loblaw Companies, has vowed to audit factories more aggressively and compensate the victims’ families. Shoppers like Lauri Langton, 62, of Seattle, plan to push retailers for more information. “You should be able to tell, right away, where the product is produced, so that you can walk away from the product and not buy it if you do not believe it was produced in a humane way,” she said. “That’s where we have power as consumers.”