Tuesday, 3 June 2008

BETTER MATHS

Okay so here I go again with the calculations:

Garment retails at £7.99 [including VAT]
Net price = £6.80 [x3 markup]
Price High Street Store perhaps paid for garment [net] = £2.26

If the garment was bought from my fantasy company FashionFix, the garment is worth [minus FashionFix's own the markup of x2] = £1.13

So that is £1.13 on the cost of the garment and £1.13 for it to be worth the company FashionFix to manage the design and production of the garment.

So, what exactly goes into the £1.13 cost of the garment? Well how long is a piece of string but consider all these:

- the fabric for the garment
- the printing and dying of the fabric for the garment
- the trims [buttons zips etc] used in the garment
- the thread to stitch the garment
- the labels within the garment denoting brand, size etc
- the cost to cut out the pattern pieces for the garment
- the machinist to put the pieces together
- the person who presses the garment
- the person who folds and packages all the garments for shipping
- the cost of the packaging for the garments in transit
- the profits of the factory who makes these garments to cover the overheads for management staff, the electricity in the factory, maintenance of the machines etc etc
- the shipping costs of the garments from the country of manufacture to the UK
- the duty that must be paid on imports to the UK. Items from India get charge 12.5% import duty on the goods at customs.
- the cost of the hangers
- the cost of the swing tickets [the paper label of the brand]
- the cost of the kimbles [the plastic things that hold the ticket to the garment]

you know - blah blah blah

I'm really sick of people saying "Oh I got this at YadaYadaHighStreetStore for £6.00" because I can only wonder "How the fuck can it be only £6.00? Everybody gets screwed for this garment to be only £6.00"

In my perfect world, everyone would learn how to sew. Also everyone will be recycling their clothing and try and buy vintage where possible. There are more clothes on the planet than we all need [I should know - most of them are in my wardrobe...]

Anyway - whatever. So suffice to say I didn't actually buy anything in H&M but just stood listening to a guy saying to his girlfriend "How many white shirts do you already have??!!" and she said "I don't have any - I keep ruining them in the wash."

Oh and I was also in Offspring moments before wandering into H&M. I felt like I had walking into a spinning Rubik's cube of vomit coloured plastic with middle aged men looking forlorn with neon Nike's in their hand.

I turned and left.

Labels: , ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home