How the Jeans Capital of the World Moved from Texas to China

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/how-the-jeans-capital-of-the-world-moved-from-texas-to-china

by okfine • 10 years ago

55 74 10 years ago

zer00eyz5• 10 years ago

As someone who has the skills (cutting, sewing, buttons, rivets) to make a pair of jeans there is a really simple reason that we (the USA) don't make jeans any more: cost.

Lets take a look at one guy making jeans in the US: http://www.roydenim.com/video (video is a great place to start, you get a sense of what the work looks like). But for $225 a pair, its an indulgence.

unethical_ban• 10 years ago

You should have the skills to operate the machine that makes 5,000 pairs a day. Why can't mass manufacturing in America be a thing?

thrownaway2424• 10 years ago

Mass manufacturing is a thing in America. America makes more stuff than any other country except, quite recently, China.

evanpw3• 10 years ago

US industrial output is way up over the past few decades; it's just industrial employment that's way down.

michaelt• 10 years ago

  operate the machine that makes 5,000 pairs a day

Robotics engineer here.

It turns out it's ridiculously difficult to make machines that will reliably deal with small, flexible, sometimes-overlapping, sometimes-folded, identically coloured bits of fabric.

You can automate parts of the garment-making process - embroidery, cutting things from rolls, stuff like that - but sewing the bits together automatically is really difficult for a machine, compared to a human.

If you've got clever solutions for this feel free to advance the technology - I'd really like a robot that can do my laundry :)

zer00eyz5• 10 years ago

It can be: american giant is an example.

Having recently gotten one of their hoodies, I can say that the quality is excellent vs what you might buy at target/gap/local retail.

But it isn't the stitching or the fabric that is the reason for me disposing of a hoodie (as an example) its going to be staining, or unavoidable damage (snagged my clothing on something).

proyb• 10 years ago

If needle break or misalignment in sewing, it become a defective. Same as there are defective PCB in the manufacturing.

airplane• 10 years ago

I am guessing you made jeans before, if so can you share and estimate the cost of materials and time it takes for one pair of jeans? Am curious because $225 for time and materials seems like too much to me.

Perhaps these guys in the video run too small of an operation to have the costs spread around and to invest in tech to speed up the process.

zer00eyz5• 10 years ago

Not jeans, but rather very expensive dresses, and at a very small scale.

1500$ dress, has probably $150-200 in material (bought at/near wholesale prices), I'm sure that the jeans in the above video probably have about $20 in material.

Labor is the killer: Cutting, sewing and finishing one of those dresses is a 20 - 30 hour job. There are other costs too, some ongoing like customer service, shipping, marketing, some one time, like grading patterns so that you can make more than one size of an item, or getting photos taken of it for your store.

There isn't really a lot of "tech" in clothing manufacture. Sewing machines haven't changed much in 50 years, the fact that 50 year old equipment is STILL used for production should tell you something about the industry. It is HARD to automate something that is so nuanced.

The way it happens in an industrial setting is the same way its always been done. Lots of people doing the same job over and over on an assembly line. Yes some things have been automated to some degree but not to the extent they have in other industries.

Edit: Yes I have made jeans for myself before, but never at scale.

pkaye• 10 years ago

Despite all the effort involved, when I look up online, most of the $225 jeans is markup. One website mentioned for a $200 pairs of jeans, $21 for the materials, $6 for labor and $8 for for overseas factory profit. So really a lot of it is markup, middlemen, branding, etc. Yet is is convenient to blame it on the high cost of labor to manufacturer it.

chris_va2• 10 years ago

Keep in mind that the vast majority of clothing is not sold at retail prices (and some of it is not sold ever). It depends on the brand, but maybe %20 is a good ballpark.

Also, there are development costs, etc.

Finally, the manufacturer isn't seeing $200. They only get the wholesale price (if they are lucky), or a percentage after the sale. With factories often needing payment upfront, and the brand not making money until after a sale occurs (if ever), there is a lot of risk that needs to be priced into the product.

zer00eyz5• 10 years ago

IN the case of the video linked it is a one man shop, in Oakland CA USA. 20$ in material is probably right on the money. other costs are probably 20$ (power, equipment upkeep)...

The rest is pay for himself. It probably takes 6-10 hours to build a pair of jeans at the level he is doing it at, and that leaves him making a reasonable hourly rate

tiatia• 10 years ago

"most of the $225 jeans is markup." I don't like your wording here. While you don't say it is "profit", it seems to suggest it.

How a about costs for the salesperson in the US? Rent for the store? Branding and marketing costs may be huge.

I recently looked into hand made automatic watches. The main difference between the major brands and smaller (EU based) unknown brands seems to be marketing. You can't pick up a life style magazine of visit an airport without advertisement for watches. This costs money.

theklub• 10 years ago

Here is another, http://www.hartforddenimcompany.com/

Same thing though, basically a luxury product.

discardorama• 10 years ago

FTA: there are 200,000 people employed in Xintang, making 300M jeans/year. That's an average of 1500 jeans/employee. Assuming an average wage of 30K/employee, that's $20/jean extra. Surely not a bank-breaking sum? Jeans vary in prices from about $30 - $300, so an additional $20/jean isn't outside the realm of possibility.

gnopgnip2• 10 years ago

You can get USA made jeans for under $40. Round House and Union Line both have them. Roy charges $225 because people will pay. You can get a pair of $200 designer jeans that were made in India or Tunisia.

anu7df2• 10 years ago

I understand the economic reality (aka greed) that led to this. But if production was made local again, how does one handle the environmental impact? Or is there no way to make a durable good pair of jeans without destroying the environment?

hyperliner2• 10 years ago

There is always a way. However, taking care of the environment would add expenses to the production process and, as a result, the cost of the pair of jean would have to increase, as would the price. Once that happens, we would then skip that environment-conscious product for one that did not have that cost embedded.

I was reading an article about the price competition in airlines. People would spend 30 minutes looking for a better deal, to get a flight that would be $5 cheaper.

If we do that for a product that basically flies you through space, imagine what you would do with a product that is disposable.

I guess the hypocrisy is that we don't want to talk about that issue. We would rather not have immigrants picking tomatoes, or sewing jeans. We can always just transfer that production to China, where the environmental and human effects are invisible to us.

anu7df2• 10 years ago

I agree to what you are saying, to an extent. Yes I comparison shop when buying air tickets and buy the cheapest, because I am not aware of the environmental impact differences between airlines. While shopping for grocery on the other hand I try to buy from local farmers even at higher costs, though i am gaining much more here as the local products tastes so much better. When it comes to clothes though, it looks like it is made in china or nothing. If clothes were made profitably in the US till 70's and real wages haven't gone up since then, why is it impossible to make clothes here without the astronomical price tags? The raw materials (cotton for example), as the article says, already comes from here.

greeneggs• 10 years ago

It isn't clear to me that there is a significant environmental impact from producing jeans.

The article itself says almost nothing. It quotes a Greenpeace report, from 2010, that says that there is blue dust in the streets (oh no!), that dye is released into rivers (oh no?), and that producing one pair of jeans uses 3625 liters of water.

(For comparison, producing a pound of beef takes 7000 liters of water, and a pound of almonds 4000 liters. [1])

[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/food-water-footprin...

nitwit005• 10 years ago

The water usage might be a difficult one, but much of the impact in China is probably apathy instead of technical difficulty. They simply aren't making any effort to give people masks, reduce dust, and so on.

carsongross3• 10 years ago

This is where, and bear with me on this HN, Donald Trump is right.

We in the west, especially us smart folks, cherish our environment, and we think it is shameful to force people to work in inhumane conditions. How fair is it, then, to force our fellow westerners who didn't win the intelligence lottery to compete with labor in countries that don't care one whit about either?

It isn't right. The multinationals will shriek bloody murder about it, because they've made a killing engaging in moral arbitrage, but it's time to tariff the hell out of products produced in ecological and human conditions we would find deplorable in our own countries.

hellbanner• 10 years ago

I recommend the book "23 things they don't tell you about capitalism" which looks at how tariffs protect local economies. When economic networks flatten, single entities dominate.

kelukelugames2• 10 years ago

I want to upvote this comment but I have no idea what "moral arbitrage" means. Is that like Apple being a green company but its factory works in Asia kill themselves?

carsongross3• 10 years ago

Yes.

sosborn2• 10 years ago

What does "being green" have to do with suicide rates at factories that are, by and large, in line with rates in the U.S.?

Inconel3• 10 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe I've read that Foxconn's suicide rates are actually lower than the rates of American college students. I understand that may not be a perfect comparison since college suicide rates tend to be fairly high and there may be many other reasons to be critical of Foxconn/Apple's labor practices but I'm not sure the highly publicized stories about suicides are necessarily a good indicator of working conditions.

tma-1• 10 years ago

Well consumers won't be able to buy their $30 jeans if they're produced locally... This problem is just as much about consumers wanting lower prices as it is about corporations wanting to make more money.

gnopgnip2• 10 years ago

You can get USA made jeans for under $40. Round House and Union Line both have them.

partycoder3• 10 years ago

You claim to be "a smart folk", while supporting Donald Trump and referring to the working class as "people who didn't win the intelligence lottery". I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you sir, are clearly not a smart folk.

The economy follows the path of least resistance and offshoring jobs is that path in the short term. Many actors in our society get rewarded in a short-term basis, e.g: bonuses are given in a per-quarter or fiscal year basis. Short-term strategies are not necessarily good for the long-term.

hfern• 10 years ago

Your comment is more ad hominem than helpful. Furthermore, being in agreement with Trump on a single issue does not mean OP supports him in general.

carsongross3• 10 years ago

I went to Cal for undergrad and Stanford for grad school.

I'm comfortable with my intellectual abilities.

Inconel3• 10 years ago

I don't think that the parent's comment regarding the possibility of Trump being right on this issue necessarily implies their overall support of him.

I doubt there are many politician who's stances you agree with 100% of the time. There probably aren't too many you disagree with completely either.

Please don't take this as an endorsement of Trump though. Also, I am certainly not one of the "smart folk" so I could be wrong in my interpretation of your comment.

evanpw3• 10 years ago

Do you think that by using tariffs for political pressure, we can force China to raise their standard of living to developed-country levels? Otherwise, this just amounts to a transfer from the Chinese poor to the American poor, which seems like a big net loss morally.

jvm• 10 years ago

It seems pretty clear that China would like their standard of living to be higher, and in fact it is rising at almost unprecedented rates [1] which have been sustained for over a decade. I'm sure they could do an even better job but I'm not sure I see how tariffs would bring that about.

[1] https://www.eca-international.com/news/november-2015/chinese...

Inconel3• 10 years ago

I'm curious why you would label the transfer from the Chinese poor to the American poor as a net loss morally? Is the transfer from the American poor to the Chinese poor also morally suspect?

I'm not trying to be argumentative, just genuinely curious about your statement. Is it a moral loss because the American poor are still relatively better off than their Chinese counterparts or something else?

chiaro• 10 years ago

In practice, it's done the opposite way. The implementation of work condition standards is a standard feature of trade liberalisation agreements, including the TPP. Manufacturing tariffs are, indeed, a wealth transfer from foreign producers and domestic consumers to the owners and workers of domestic production. Of course, this is a highly inefficient way to do this transfer, and you'd be better off redistributing the broad gains from free trade.

You'd be hard pressed to find a Trump supporter admit that they are looking for government handouts, though.

paulddraper4• 10 years ago

Tariffs are not profitable. Deadweight losses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deadweight_loss

fennecfoxen2• 10 years ago

And if we're really lucky, Trump or Bernie or even Clinton will Smoot-Hawley-tarriff us into another Great Depression.

mozumder• 10 years ago

Trump isn't against free trade because of environmental issues or or labor disparity. He's against free trade because he feels China is artificially deflating their currency.

Trump has absolutely no concern for America's labor force.

kevin_thibedeau• 10 years ago

Trump is beating a populist drum to pander for votes from the disenfranchised Republican base. As a textbook narcissist there is no way he actually cares about the downtrodden and would leap at the opportunity to offshore labor if it was ever to his advantage. Witness today's flip -flop on taxing the wealthy. He's cribbing from Sander's playbook to try and attract more left leaning voters. There's no way he would ever push for such tax reform if he were actually put in office.

humanrebar• 10 years ago

He clearly doesn't believe in his positions but is saying what he thinks people want to hear. His faux pas on punishing women who have abortions makes that crystal clear. It's what pro-choice people think pro-life people say. Pro-life people don't actually think that way.

I suspect it's the same deal with globalization policy. This is a man who manufactures his clothing outside of the U.S. If he cared about American workers or inhumane conditions, he'd at least do it kicking and screaming instead of acting like he's inculpable.

tatrajim3• 10 years ago

Trump may be a raging narcissist, but he has a long history of kindness to strangers. Probably the most famous example is his 1986 rescue of a widow's family farm in Georgia, about to be sold after the husband had killed himself in despair:

http://www.thepoliticalinsider.com/a-66-year-old-widows-farm...

Thirty years later, the daughter appeared at a Trump rally in South Carolins to thank him, probably one factor behind his decisive win in that state.

http://youtu.be/dRoX9BTu8Ew

If you check the web you can find many other such accounts of his acts of generosity.

draw_down• 10 years ago

Politicians say a lot of things, you're a chump if you actually believe them. Come on.

AndrewKemendo• 10 years ago

I find this interesting timing for the documentary/article, as this is certainly not a new phenomenon [1] and if anything is beginning to reverse with "re-shoring."

What does seem to be happening is more discussion about the impacts of many of the free trade agreements of the 70's/80's/90's - more specifically how goods made in the US were off-shored as a result.

[1]http://www.alternet.org/story/13095/levis%3A_made_in_china

[2]http://apparel.edgl.com/news/Reshoring-Success-Stories--What...

HillaryBriss• 10 years ago

The explanation behind the title is summarized in this line from the article: "With rock-bottom wages and government assistance, the industry boomed."

induscreep• 10 years ago

so how does the Japanese raw denim industry compare to US/China?

Kalium2• 10 years ago

It's much smaller. It's not quite artisinal anymore, but it's not where the mass-produced jeans the world prefers come from. It's where the high-quality $300-a-pair jeans come from.

ericdykstra• 10 years ago

It's alive and well! But in size and scale, it won't compete with US/China just because of the fact that most people don't care about the quality of their jeans. Like most things, the premium market is much smaller than the "good enough" market. The top brand names for raw denim enthusiasts are still chiefly Japanese companies.

I've bought 5 pairs of Japanese denim from 5 different manufacturers over the past 7 years. If anyone has questions about raw denim, feel free to leave a comment or send me a message.

ksec• 10 years ago

I do, what makes different denim great? What makes them Artisian? Why are Japaness Denim better?

Is Miracle Air from Uniqlo part of it?

adamconroy2• 10 years ago

Jeans are a weird phenomenon. Ugly, heavy, unflattering fabric. They only look good on people who would look good no matter what they wore.

Worse still, they are like a disease. I was in a bar/restaurant recently, and I couldn't help but notice how many people were wearing jeans. So I did a visual survey, and as far as I could tell, out of about 40 people, only myself and one other lady were not wearing them. Even my wife was in a pair.

lpsz• 10 years ago

It's a US thing for everyone (regardless of gender and age) to dress in jeans and sneakers. Curiously not the case elsewhere in the world, though.

techsupporter• 10 years ago

I wear jeans (made in the U.S.[0]), sneakers (made in the U.S.[1]), and t-shirts (made in the U.S.[2]) because they're comfortable. On the other hand, I very rarely go out to any place that most anyone would call fancy. "Fine dining" for my spouse and I is Taco Time or a couple of places in Ballard[3] that we know to be open late and have cheap late happy hour food menus. (Oh, and socks[4], too.)

0 - http://texasjeans.com/

1 - http://www.newbalance.com/made-in-usa-1/

2 - http://store.americanapparel.net/en/

3 - Seattle

4 - http://www.socks4life.com/specials/made-in-usa.html

brusch64• 10 years ago

What would be your alternative ? You think that people look better in working casuals ? Suits ? From your comment I would suppose that you are living in the US.

I personally wear jeans pretty much exclusively and have no problem with it. I prefer and search for heavy jeans.

In my opinion people always look better in fitting clothes. If they are wearing unfitting jeans, they are going to look bad in it. If they are wearing unfitting suits, they gonna look bad in it. If they wear fitting clothes nearly everything works.

Many years back I've worked with an American company (I am from Europe) and they really didn't like us wearing jeans all the time (a totally normal thing to do in Europe where I am living). They said it didn't look professionel enough if you aren't wearing working casuals.

adamconroy2• 10 years ago

I guess my ideal alternative would be simple diversity. But if everyone is going to wear the same thing then I would prefer it if the fabric was more aesthetically pleasing.

But of course its none of my business, everyone can do what they like.

It sort of feels like a feature of 'Brave New World', where everyone is apathetically conditioned to wear the same thing.

How the Jeans Capital of the World Moved from Texas to China

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