Bangladesh’s tale of T-shirts

Cheap garment-factory labour doesn’t always equal cheap clothes.
The availability of low-cost workers has sent mass-market clothing labels of all stripes — H&M, Gap, Wal-Mart, Zara and others — into Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry.
But designer brands including Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and Hugo Boss also have outsourced manufacturing to Bangladesh, where worker safety has become a huge issue following several fatal accidents. Indeed, high-end labels often use the same factories as their discount peers.
Giorgio Armani last year received shipment of 21,600 pounds of T-shirts and underwear made in a factory in the port city of Chittagong, according to the shipping records. A nearby factory supplied women’s pants to Michael Kors.
Armani said the Italian fashion house produces a “relatively small number of items” in Bangladesh. “The commonly held assumption that all manufacturing conditions there are inadequate is not a fair reflection of the reality of the situation and does that country a disservice,” Armani said.
A Michael Kors spokeswoman said it has sourced from Bangladesh “very sparingly.”
Fashion’s most basic item, the T-shirt, highlights the high-low incongruity.
At shops in London, a Bangladesh-made T-shirt from designer-denim brand G-Star Raw has a price tag of £60 ($91.25) — 15 times the £4 Wal-Mart’s Asda chain charges for one of its basic men’s white Ts, sold under the George label. Bangladesh-made Ts cost £35 at Replay, an Italy-based chain specialising in casual clothes in distressed fabrics. Simple grey printed Tommy Hilfiger Ts cost $39.99 on Amazon.com.
The array of prices for clothing made in Bangladesh exposes how far-removed a garment’s retail price is from its production cost — and how small a sliver goes to the factory that makes it.
Though there are small differences in what goes into a T-shirt, the biggest determinant of its price is its brand name, experts say.
“Brands like Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein or Giorgio Armani have a price point that is higher because the brand has a reputation and that makes a difference,” says Ralston Fernandez, senior vice-president for operations at ZXY Apparel Buying Solutions, a Bangladesh buying house that places orders for retailers at local factories.
Retail prices include other costs, such as advertising, rent on the boutique and salaries for the salespeople.
With a T-shirt, at least half of the production cost comes from the raw material, says Bakhtiar Uddin Ahmed, the general manager at Fakir Apparels, a T-shirt factory with clients such as H&M, Primark, Puma and G-Star Raw. Fakir Apparels buys a kilo of Bangladesh cotton for $3.80, enough for four shirts.
Some high-end brands opt for long-fibered Pima cotton, grown in the US, because it can survive more washing. A kilo of Pima costs about $5.50, says ZXY’s Fernandez.
Adding in polyester or viscose can help lower the cost. Yet some of the cheapest T-shirts made in Bangladesh are 100 percent cotton, such as £4 Tesco and Wal-Mart items, while the £35 Replay shirt is a blend of cotton and viscose.
After cotton comes the labour. The government in Bangladesh, facing pressure to improve working conditions following a factory collapse two months ago that killed more than 1,100 people, has committed to raising the minimum wage, which is currently $38 a month, a quarter of China’s. Doubling it would add about 10 to 12 cents to the cost of making a basic T-shirt, according to Abby Jamal, managing director of ZXY Apparel, the Dhaka-based buying house. Retailers such as H&M have said they would absorb higher labour costs.
To be sure, high-end shirts are more likely to have little extras, and each embellishment adds a few cents to the cost. The pocket on the £60 G-Star Raw T-shirt likely requires two or three more workers in the production line, estimates Mohammad Zulficar Ali, executive director at the Bangladesh office of global buying house Synergies Worldwide.
He also points out the high-quality contrast piping that covers the neck seam, as well as two stamp-sized labels — one in leather — adorning the shirt, and a black price tag attached with a string. “These tags are very expensive tags,” he says.
Quality differences are also seen in printing processes. Observing a £6 grey Primark T-shirt with a black Iron Man design, Ali describes it as “a very cheap rubber print,” which could cost 10 to 12 cents apiece to add. The orange print on a $39.99 Hilfiger Denim T-shirt is higher quality and could cost twice that, says Ali.
Ali, who didn’t source any of the T-shirts, estimated that the Primark shirt cost $1.60 to produce, the Hilfiger shirt $5 and the G-Star Raw pocket tee $6 or a shade more. Primark and G-Star declined to comment on their production costs. Hilfiger didn’t respond to requests for comment.
In Bangladesh, high-end labels often end up paying the factory a fraction more for their order than mass-market retailers because they order fewer items. The factories prefer the larger orders, because it makes their production schedules more predictable.
Fakir charges H&M about 20 percent less for a basic T-shirt with no pocket or special finish than an equivalent G-Star Raw product. “That is mostly due to volume,” says Fakir Nafizuzzaman, the factory’s director.
It isn’t just designer T-shirts made in Bangladesh. Shipping records show Ralph Lauren sources a variety of clothes from there, including polo shirts, lamb’s wool sweaters, $35 neon skinny jeans for girls and a $110 quilted child’s jacket. Ralph Lauren declined to comment.
Hugo Boss AG said it began sourcing T-shirts and bodywear in the country a year ago because it was facing capacity constraints in its European factories. The German fashion house said it doesn’t derive a cost benefit yet because it is investing in its relationships with four factories.
Fakir, which makes 130,000 T-shirts a day in its Narayanganj factory, is moving away from basic T-shirts for H&M to clients like G-Star Raw because it has improved its ability to do better trims and finishes. There is less competition at the higher end, says Ahmed. However, G-Star said it hasn’t placed an order at Fakir since last year.
Factory owners in Bangladesh say their profit margins tend to be the same, regardless of the customer. Ahmed says Fakir’s profit margin doesn’t top 2.5 percent. “Customers are always pushing down costs,” he says.
For the seamstress making the T-shirt, wages depend on her skill, and have nothing to do with whether she is sewing a designer or discount label.
A top sewing machine operator may get $100 a month, not counting overtime, while a worker one grade below may earn around $80, says Fernandez — about enough to buy one of the high-end designer Ts.

Source: The Daily Star