In Apparel Industry, Advantages of “Made in USA” Label Wear Thin

Patriotism isn’t easy. Just ask Los Angeles’s garment makers.

Three years after combining their names to create Venley, a company that produces T-shirts and other basics in a downtown Los Angeles factory, one-time fraternity brothers Nick Ventura and Kevin Gressley are finding manufacturing clothes in the U.S. to be an expensive and frustrating undertaking.

Like many other apparel executives in the U.S., the pair pay more than the minimum wage, Ventura said. Sometimes, the same amount of money Venley shells out for locally made fabric gets Wal-Mart Stores Inc. an entire outfit sewed abroad.

But in light of the substandard conditions at a Bangladeshi garment factory that collapsed in April, killing more than 1,000 workers, the idea of using overseas labor makes Ventura’s “blood boil.”

“The social benefits of staying local have come to the forefront for us,” the 26-year-old entrepreneur said.

Venley is part of a contingent of clothing companies, including American Apparel Inc. and 7 For All Mankind, that follow a hyper-local manufacturing policy.

They do it to support a nationalistic ideal or to keep a closer eye on production. Many feel a renewed sense of purpose after the Bangladeshi tragedy. But the feeling is tempered by skepticism that their ranks will grow anytime soon.

Many customers are still enamored with so-called “fast fashion,” preferring inexpensive foreign-made shirts to domestic options priced at a premium. Less than 5 percent of apparel sold in the U.S. is made here, compared with 95 percent in 1960, according to advocacy group Save the Garment Center.

“Companies are driven by what consumers buy, and nobody’s buying U.S.A. even though consumers preach about it all day,” Ventura said.

It’s a far cry from the post-World War II era, when the Southern California garment industry emerged. With immigrant seamstresses from Mexico, Europe and Asia offering a steady source of labor, the West Coast fashion empire steadily expanded.

Then the North American Free Trade Agreement blasted open trade barriers in the 1990s. Cheaper clothing imports flooded across borders, conditioning companies to search for even more affordable manufacturing in Asia once China emerged on the world stage.

Garment workers in the U.S. can command as much as $14 an hour, according to the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights. Even after recent minimum wage increases overseas, their counterparts earn the equivalent of only 21 cents an hour in Bangladesh and $2.45 in Guangzhou, a hub of apparel manufacturing in southern China, government figures show.

In the U.S., more than 600 textile mills have closed since 1997.

American Apparel chief executive Dov Charney, an outspoken advocate for the “Made in the U.S.A.” movement, lambasted companies that advertise very inexpensive clothing as selling “virtually stolen goods” made by underpaid workers abroad. American Apparel’s items are significantly pricier – for example, short-sleeved crew-neck shirts sell for $20.

“It could be that over time, things will be made in a better fashion throughout the industry,” Charney said. “But there will be a big cost increase.”

The Los Angeles apparel market these days is built on smaller, entrepreneurial companies, said Ilse Metchek, president of the California Fashion Association.

The local garment scene hasn’t died; “it’s just different,” she said. “We’re the little guy in the corner.”

Fashion labels Splendid and Ella Moss, for instance, relocated their headquarters in early June to a stylish 82,000-square-foot space in downtown Los Angeles. The two do 90 percent of their production in the L.A. area.

In some industries, more American companies are considering a return to U.S. production, partly as a reaction to rising wages abroad and the swelling costs of shipping goods. On the home front, technological advances, especially in the auto and machinery sectors, have helped offset the high cost of U.S. labor.

But in the fashion world, tight margins and the need for human hands to drape and sew continue to make foreign factories appealing.

And working with a local contractor doesn’t guarantee humane employment practices. In December, federal regulators said they uncovered endemic “sweatshop-like” conditions in the downtown Los Angeles fashion district, including underpaid wages and lax or fake record-keeping.