Cheap American Apparel T-Shirt Printing, an honest opinion.
27/11/09 22:08 Filed in: Work
Every week I get loads of enquiries asking me to supply and screen print onto American Apparel T-Shirts.
They're great looking t-shirts, with fantastic sexy marketing, a plausible ethical message to FREE L.A.'s Hispanic working community and above all, they've got trendy shops in all the right High Streets.
The very popular 2001 Fine Jersey Short Sleeve T-Shirt comes in 30 colours & 7 sizes and costs a whooping £13 in their shops.
The wholesale price is much cheaper: a case (96 pieces one size, one colour) of say white, cost £2.30 +vat each, that's £253.92, + £40 AIR FREIGHT FROM L.A. a grand total of £299.92 for 96 white t-shirts, or £3.12 per t-shirt before you've even put a print on it. (These prices are based on the current temporary VAT rate of 15%).
But here's the hard bit to chew. You've paid £3.12 for each t-shirt, that has been flown from L.A.. It'll take at least a week to get from "downtown L.A.", to LAX then to LHR (terminal 5??), then customs clearance, then onto me for printing. If you're buying American Apparel for ethical reasons, the CO2 emissions in getting them to your door, put you closer to Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler than Al Gore.
If you're buying them for the AA label, then make sure you're buying them in quantity, over 400 items, otherwise it's not economically & 'emission ethically' worth it.
Alternatively Continental Clothing offer a smaller range of colours & styles, but the quality is slightly better and a slightly heavier combed cotton.
N03 Mens Classic JERSEY T-Shirt 165gsm N11. Mens Slim Fit JERSEY T-Shirt 150gsm N12. Women's Slim-Fit JERSEY T-Shirt 155gsm
They're great looking t-shirts, with fantastic sexy marketing, a plausible ethical message to FREE L.A.'s Hispanic working community and above all, they've got trendy shops in all the right High Streets.
The very popular 2001 Fine Jersey Short Sleeve T-Shirt comes in 30 colours & 7 sizes and costs a whooping £13 in their shops.
The wholesale price is much cheaper: a case (96 pieces one size, one colour) of say white, cost £2.30 +vat each, that's £253.92, + £40 AIR FREIGHT FROM L.A. a grand total of £299.92 for 96 white t-shirts, or £3.12 per t-shirt before you've even put a print on it. (These prices are based on the current temporary VAT rate of 15%).
But here's the hard bit to chew. You've paid £3.12 for each t-shirt, that has been flown from L.A.. It'll take at least a week to get from "downtown L.A.", to LAX then to LHR (terminal 5??), then customs clearance, then onto me for printing. If you're buying American Apparel for ethical reasons, the CO2 emissions in getting them to your door, put you closer to Pol Pot and Adolf Hitler than Al Gore.
If you're buying them for the AA label, then make sure you're buying them in quantity, over 400 items, otherwise it's not economically & 'emission ethically' worth it.
Alternatively Continental Clothing offer a smaller range of colours & styles, but the quality is slightly better and a slightly heavier combed cotton.
N03 Mens Classic JERSEY T-Shirt 165gsm N11. Mens Slim Fit JERSEY T-Shirt 150gsm N12. Women's Slim-Fit JERSEY T-Shirt 155gsm
(Their neck label only has a small 6mm square "size" label, and the Continental logo is part of the washing instruction labels on the inside seem).
The Continental shirts above start at £3.10 PRINTED and there is UK stock, shipped in by sea and made in Turkey using premium cotton, grown in the middle east, NOT from Uzbekistan.
Click here for more on their ethical program.
Stop the Press! screen prints T-Shirts & apparel, for a local & UK market, with a strong sense of what goes on & our responsibility to the rest of the world. We've always been feeling our way on environmental & ethical issues, whether this be in stock buying & waste. Unlike corporations who seem to copy & paste their environmental credentials from one another, we welcome customers, suppliers, producers & bloggers alike, to help educate us further, with practical solutions. So give us a Tweet!
Where does your cotton come from?
22/11/09 22:11 Filed in: Work
Following the recent Newsnight investigation into Uzbekistan cotton and child labour, Epona’s Juliet Bacon talks to the Environmental Justice Foundation to find out what can be done to tackle the issue in the promotional clothing industry
17 January, 2008
Many large clothing manufacturers claim it is too difficult to ever be certain where materials such as cotton come from, since garment components are sourced from all over the world and supply chains are increasingly complex. A frequent excuse is that they have little or no control of where the cotton comes from and that it is the suppliers, not the buyers, that are ultimately responsible for ensuring raw materials have been ethically produced.
But is this really true – or is it more a case that most large retailers turn a blind eye to their cotton’s origins, as it might not be in their interest to find out what’s really going on behind closed doors? And how easy is it to trace a garment’s cotton back to the cotton field and why is there a need to do this in the first place?
One very good reason is given by The Environmental Justice Foundation in its report on Uzbekistan’s cotton production, where it exposes what it calls one of the most exploitative enterprises in the world. ‘White Gold: The true cost of cotton - Uzbekistan, cotton and the crushing of a nation’ depicts a corrupt government regime that is responsible for serious human rights abuses and what it claims is one of the world’s worst human-induced environmental catastrophes. More recently, journalist Simon Ostrovsky visited Uzbekistan to further investigate White Gold’s claims in a special report for BBC’s Newsnight. What he found was both shocking and tragic to watch. What’s more, he revealed that Uzbek cotton is being purchased by European buyers and ending up on the UK high street – and possibly in the promotional clothing market...
Although a little known country, Uzbekistan is the second largest cotton producer in the world. However, the government is the only authorised seller of this product and it alone controls the $1billion income generated by this industry.
The problem
The EJF report claims that this money is being used to finance a corrupt regime that is enslaving its own nation. It states that up to one third of the country’s workforce is being forced to labour on cotton farms without reasonable wages or the right to own the land they work. Anyone who speaks out is in danger of violence, imprisonment and intimidation. To give an example, in May 2005 a largely peaceful demonstration led to 700 deaths – an event that has never been properly investigated. Dissidents and journalists were jailed, and since then even the BBC has been denied permission to operate in Uzbekistan. In order to make their documentary, Simon and his team had to pose as reporters from a textile industry magazine to gain entry to the country.
One of the most shocking revelations of the documentary was that it’s not just adults picking cotton for the government – children as young as seven are being forced into labour. Human rights groups have estimated that a staggering 450,000 children are working the fields: one nine-year-old girl who was interviewed said had been doing it for as long as she could remember.
The Newsnight report showed footage of armed guards leading children away from their school and taking them in trucks to work in the fields. The documentary makers were caught filming this event and alleged that the police detained them for three hours and that the videotapes were confiscated (luckily they had switched the tapes).
Cotton ends up in the UK
Handpicking cotton is a hard and tiring job. Children were seen working with no protective wear and drinking water straight from the irrigation canals that are polluted by the hazardous chemicals from the pesticides used to farm the cotton. One child worker said they were paid around 2p per kilo, which is a fraction of the true value of the cotton.
The official party line is that no child labour is used in the production of Uzbek cotton. But the reality appears to be very different… and European companies are helping to bankroll these unethical working practices, to the sum of $340 million per year. Much of the cotton is sent to Bangladesh where it is manufactured into garments that end up in the UK.
Uzbek cotton production is not just responsible for human rights abuses; it has also led to a huge scale environmental disaster. To irrigate the thousands of cotton fields, vast amounts of water have been diverted from the Aral Sea. This sea was once the world’s fourth largest inland body of water and is now reduced to 15% of its former volume, a sight that is clearly visible from space.
Under-investment has led to mismanagement of the water diversion system and up to 60% of the water has been lost between the Sea and the fields. A serious lack of foresight into the effect this would have on future generations has had catastrophic consequences and led to the collapse of the fishing industry, leaving thousands of ‘environmental refugees’ once dependants on the Aral Sea as a source of income. Karakalakstan, an area once reliant upon this Sea for its livelihood, now has unemployment rates of up to 70%. And not only this, inhabitants are also exposed to 43 million tonnes of salt and pesticide laden dust given off by the former sea bed, which has serious health implications – in some areas up to 50% of all reported deaths are respiratory in nature.
The solution
In the face of problems such as these, there is always the question of ‘what can I do’? But in this case, there are some proactive steps that can be taken within the promotional clothing industry that would have a direct impact. The EJF has launched a campaign to encourage manufactures to label every item of clothing with information about the origin of the garment, including where the raw material was produced, not just where the clothing was constructed. This would lead to a much more transparent supply chain and empower the customer – be it an end user, merchandiser or garment decorator – to make an informed choice about the product they are buying.
This in turn, will put pressure on companies to ‘clean up’ their supply chain by undertaking independent reviews of their cotton suppliers and seeking assurances that the cotton is produced in accordance with international labour norms. Some of the larger retailers who were questioned in the Newsnight documentary stated that it was simply too hard for them to find out where the cotton used to produce their products had been grown.
However, like Continental, Epona has joined forces with the EJF and has been able to trace its cotton back to the fields. To show our support for this campaign, Epona will label every garment with information on the cotton’s origin from 2008. We hope this will help to encourage other manufactures to label their products and enable customers to see that there are genuine alternatives available to them, such as choosing Fairtrade and organic cotton, or at least knowing where the conventional cotton was produced.
There seems to be a slow acceptance that the responsibility of the supply chain lies as much with the retailer as with their suppliers, and more attention is being paid to the ethics and environmental impact of raw material production. As the EJF puts it: “The International community can play a significant role in promoting agricultural reform, enhancing civil society and ensuring a better future for the Uzbek people and their environment.”
17 January, 2008
Many large clothing manufacturers claim it is too difficult to ever be certain where materials such as cotton come from, since garment components are sourced from all over the world and supply chains are increasingly complex. A frequent excuse is that they have little or no control of where the cotton comes from and that it is the suppliers, not the buyers, that are ultimately responsible for ensuring raw materials have been ethically produced.
But is this really true – or is it more a case that most large retailers turn a blind eye to their cotton’s origins, as it might not be in their interest to find out what’s really going on behind closed doors? And how easy is it to trace a garment’s cotton back to the cotton field and why is there a need to do this in the first place?
One very good reason is given by The Environmental Justice Foundation in its report on Uzbekistan’s cotton production, where it exposes what it calls one of the most exploitative enterprises in the world. ‘White Gold: The true cost of cotton - Uzbekistan, cotton and the crushing of a nation’ depicts a corrupt government regime that is responsible for serious human rights abuses and what it claims is one of the world’s worst human-induced environmental catastrophes. More recently, journalist Simon Ostrovsky visited Uzbekistan to further investigate White Gold’s claims in a special report for BBC’s Newsnight. What he found was both shocking and tragic to watch. What’s more, he revealed that Uzbek cotton is being purchased by European buyers and ending up on the UK high street – and possibly in the promotional clothing market...
Although a little known country, Uzbekistan is the second largest cotton producer in the world. However, the government is the only authorised seller of this product and it alone controls the $1billion income generated by this industry.
The problem
The EJF report claims that this money is being used to finance a corrupt regime that is enslaving its own nation. It states that up to one third of the country’s workforce is being forced to labour on cotton farms without reasonable wages or the right to own the land they work. Anyone who speaks out is in danger of violence, imprisonment and intimidation. To give an example, in May 2005 a largely peaceful demonstration led to 700 deaths – an event that has never been properly investigated. Dissidents and journalists were jailed, and since then even the BBC has been denied permission to operate in Uzbekistan. In order to make their documentary, Simon and his team had to pose as reporters from a textile industry magazine to gain entry to the country.
One of the most shocking revelations of the documentary was that it’s not just adults picking cotton for the government – children as young as seven are being forced into labour. Human rights groups have estimated that a staggering 450,000 children are working the fields: one nine-year-old girl who was interviewed said had been doing it for as long as she could remember.
The Newsnight report showed footage of armed guards leading children away from their school and taking them in trucks to work in the fields. The documentary makers were caught filming this event and alleged that the police detained them for three hours and that the videotapes were confiscated (luckily they had switched the tapes).
Cotton ends up in the UK
Handpicking cotton is a hard and tiring job. Children were seen working with no protective wear and drinking water straight from the irrigation canals that are polluted by the hazardous chemicals from the pesticides used to farm the cotton. One child worker said they were paid around 2p per kilo, which is a fraction of the true value of the cotton.
The official party line is that no child labour is used in the production of Uzbek cotton. But the reality appears to be very different… and European companies are helping to bankroll these unethical working practices, to the sum of $340 million per year. Much of the cotton is sent to Bangladesh where it is manufactured into garments that end up in the UK.
Uzbek cotton production is not just responsible for human rights abuses; it has also led to a huge scale environmental disaster. To irrigate the thousands of cotton fields, vast amounts of water have been diverted from the Aral Sea. This sea was once the world’s fourth largest inland body of water and is now reduced to 15% of its former volume, a sight that is clearly visible from space.
Under-investment has led to mismanagement of the water diversion system and up to 60% of the water has been lost between the Sea and the fields. A serious lack of foresight into the effect this would have on future generations has had catastrophic consequences and led to the collapse of the fishing industry, leaving thousands of ‘environmental refugees’ once dependants on the Aral Sea as a source of income. Karakalakstan, an area once reliant upon this Sea for its livelihood, now has unemployment rates of up to 70%. And not only this, inhabitants are also exposed to 43 million tonnes of salt and pesticide laden dust given off by the former sea bed, which has serious health implications – in some areas up to 50% of all reported deaths are respiratory in nature.
The solution
In the face of problems such as these, there is always the question of ‘what can I do’? But in this case, there are some proactive steps that can be taken within the promotional clothing industry that would have a direct impact. The EJF has launched a campaign to encourage manufactures to label every item of clothing with information about the origin of the garment, including where the raw material was produced, not just where the clothing was constructed. This would lead to a much more transparent supply chain and empower the customer – be it an end user, merchandiser or garment decorator – to make an informed choice about the product they are buying.
This in turn, will put pressure on companies to ‘clean up’ their supply chain by undertaking independent reviews of their cotton suppliers and seeking assurances that the cotton is produced in accordance with international labour norms. Some of the larger retailers who were questioned in the Newsnight documentary stated that it was simply too hard for them to find out where the cotton used to produce their products had been grown.
However, like Continental, Epona has joined forces with the EJF and has been able to trace its cotton back to the fields. To show our support for this campaign, Epona will label every garment with information on the cotton’s origin from 2008. We hope this will help to encourage other manufactures to label their products and enable customers to see that there are genuine alternatives available to them, such as choosing Fairtrade and organic cotton, or at least knowing where the conventional cotton was produced.
There seems to be a slow acceptance that the responsibility of the supply chain lies as much with the retailer as with their suppliers, and more attention is being paid to the ethics and environmental impact of raw material production. As the EJF puts it: “The International community can play a significant role in promoting agricultural reform, enhancing civil society and ensuring a better future for the Uzbek people and their environment.”