The colorful tees, tanks and other basics made in American
Apparel’s downtown factory brought the company close to $250
million in sales in 2005 ““ about six times what it made three
years ago.
Resonance LLC, a clothing company started by former UCLA
students, is to unveil a new line this month after selling out of
its inventory.
And No Sweat Apparel, a Massachusetts-based entity with a
similar ideology, grew nearly 100 percent in 2005 after growing
about 700 percent the year before.
Consumers may not know it, but what the companies have in common
is a sweatshop-free philosophy.
They are part of a small movement in the garment industry toward
operating with a more socially conscious attitude. And though only
a few wholesalers and retailers are digging into the sweatshop-free
niche, some that have are posting noteworthy numbers.
With sexy product design and aggressive marketing touting its
fair treatment of workers, American Apparel put sweatshop-free
clothing on the map, said Barbara Bundy, vice president of
education at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising.
Other entrepreneurs have experimented with the sweatshop-free
ideology American Apparel Founder Dov Charney is now pushing
“but never to the degree that he has,” Bundy said.
American Apparel targets 16- to 30-year-olds, the
“city-dwelling, well-traveled, well-heeled kind of young
consumer,” said Matthew Swenson, the company’s fashion
media adviser.
Mai Nguyen, who manages the Westwood store that opened this past
summer, said almost all the customers with whom she has talked know
about American Apparel’s ideology. The store tracks
shoppers’ ZIP codes, and college students and teens from
affluent areas such as Pacific Palisades and Beverly Hills make up
a large portion of the clientele, she said.
Joshua To ““ a Class of 2005 UCLA alumnus and a founder of
Resonance, a company that prints all of its designs for
woman’s T-shirts on American Apparel garments ““ said
judging from e-mail addresses of online shoppers, students also
form the base of his company’s devotees.
American Apparel owns the L.A. factory where workers make the
clothes that line store racks in bright shades, including yellows
and turquoises. It pays an average of $12.50 per hour to garment
workers and recently began offering a health care plan for $8 a
week, spokeswoman Cynthia Semon said.
The company has also gained attention with advertisements some
women’s rights activists have criticized as pornographic.
Among other images posted on American Apparel’s Web site are
advertisements featuring one employee wearing a soaked white
T-shirt and underwear in the shower and another re-enacting
“her favorite poses from vintage porn mags.”
Despite the controversy surrounding its publicity, American
Apparel retains a unique image in the industry because it has kept
everything from design to sewing in-house to ensure fair pay,
ventilation and other basic conditions for workers.
No Sweat Apparel has a different strategy. It employs the
subcontracting model most other industry retailers use but works
only with factories that have unionized laborers, said Adam Neiman,
founder and chief executive officer.
“We want to show the industry, as well as the big brands,
a model that’s compatible with their own,” Neiman said.
“We’re not just interested in … making
upper-middle-class consumers in the West feel like they have clean
hands. We actually want to change the industry.”
Unionized workers can teach laborers at other factories how to
organize and earn higher wages and benefits, Neiman said. But
American Apparel workers are not unionized. The only advice they
can give to workers in other factories is to sign up for waiting
lists for jobs at American Apparel, he said.
While the sweatshop-free motto is making its mark on fashion,
the rise of companies such as American Apparel and No Sweat Apparel
may not signify a change in shopper mentality, some analysts
say.
“There is a growing awareness there. But I think when it
comes down to the cash register ringing, it doesn’t matter if
the price is right,” Bundy said.
Candace Corlett, a principal at the market research firm WSL
Strategic Retail, says she does not think the socially conscious
message will have a “ripple effect” in the industry.
She points out that among other giants, Gap and Nike have continued
to thrive after headlines and activists attacked their labor
practices.
In the same way Wal-Mart markets low prices and Target focuses
on design, “sweatshop-free” is simply a way companies
can connect with consumers, helping them “break through the
clutter of retail,” Corlett said.
Still, while shoppers prize design, ethics matter, Neiman
said.
“You’ve basically got four parameters where you used
to just have three,” he said. “It used to be price,
quality, design. … What we’ve done is we’ve injected
a fourth element into the equation.”
Resonance has found fans in shoppers willing to pay more for
clothes, with high-end boutiques in places from Europe to Chicago
and the Dominican Republic carrying the company’s designs, To
said.
He and his friends started the company to prove it is possible
to make money and be responsible, he said. Besides printing on
sweatshop-free material, the company has initiated projects such as
donating all profits from sales of a tote bag to Hurricane Katrina
victims.
To has converted his parents’ Bay Area living room into an
unofficial office, with file cabinets parked next to a rack holding
Resonance shirts and hoodies.
He said he hopes Resonance will one day generate enough revenue
for him and his colleagues to survive without working other
jobs.
And after selling more than 5,000 shirts in under three years
without dropping any cash on advertising, he believes they are on
their way.