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

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

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

  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 :)

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).

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

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.

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.

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

"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.

Yes.

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.?

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.

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

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.

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

I'm comfortable with my intellectual abilities.

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.

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...

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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Is Miracle Air from Uniqlo part of it?