There’s a whole hoard of people out there that won’t believe this, but we’ll tell you anyway… not all fabrics are created equal.
To put it another way, there are different qualities of denim. Of silk, of cotton, of wool. Even if you overlook things such as the way the plant or animal the fabric came from was treated, or the wages and working conditions of the people who made the fabric, they still aren’t all equal. Indeed, the fibres that make up the fabric itself come in different grades, then the production of that fabric can impact the quality of the finish. With this in mind statements like “anything more than $x for a pair of jeans is a rip off” are just plain wrong.
The really crap part is that 99% of consumers can’t tell the difference between fabric qualities (beyond the extremes, anyway). It’s totally understandable – most of us can’t tell the difference in the quality of a carpet until it’s been used for five years straight and we can see how it fared.
If the vast majority of buyers can’t tell the difference for themselves, then brand must come into play. Over time, buyers will recognise particular brands for the production of quality merchandise and will be prepared to pay accordingly. Admittedly, this is probably still more true for things like electronics (consider Sony Vs Acme) than for fashion. The real issue occurs when brands that have developed a reputation for quality and the according desirability abuse their position and start to try and cut costs to increase profit margins. Is there any industry in which this is more obvious than fashion? Probably not.
Today, the fashion industry is in a place where many brands that were traditionally considered ‘luxury’ for their quality and attention to detail are produced en-masse with workmanship and materials not dissimilar to those perhaps a third of the price. (We’re not for a moment saying that Prada is comparable to Topshop, but contemporary labels such as Carven – absolutely).
The question then is where is the real cost coming from?
We’ve posted before about our profit margins and how much it costs to produce one of our tshirts. You can see in that post that we don’t operate on large margins. We also noted in that post that as production volumes increase, our margins will naturally increase a certain amount without the cost to the end consumer going up. (In fact, we often decrease the wholesale price so the cost to end consumers goes down). This is a key component of our business model. We also intend to actually cap production. So even when Bento is a larger label with stockists in multiple countries, we’ll still only be producing a fixed number of each style each season. This is for a very simple case of supply and demand. With limited supply, the perceived value of each item increases.
In most cases however, clothing labels work to minimise production costs by finding the cheapest possible fabrics and manufacturers. They then price their garments at a level that suits the perceived place they wish to be in the market (which does not necessarily reflect the actual cost). The difference then goes into the pursuit of desire – dressing celebrities, having their garments in magazines and whatnot – to make customers want those pieces more and boost the overall perception of the brand. Because these garments are not necessarily any better than those a fraction of the price without all the desire funding, consumers become conditioned to believe things like “any more than $x for a pair of jeans is a rip off”.
So what’s our point?
That advertising and PR is bad? Heck no! We love being in magazines and seeing our clothes in photos.
Our point is that factors that could traditionally be used as points of comparison can no longer be used as such. A high price does not necessarily mean high quality. A particular fabric cannot be compared to another of the same makeup and be expected to be like for like.
Brands however, can still hold some value. But, just like that carpet, you’re going to have to see it yourself before you can tell.
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