Case Study : Current Profit System

In The myth of the ethical shopper, Hobbes (2015) states that although boycotts may have been successful in 1990, they are failing in 2105. He asserts that the way in which our clothes are now made has changed and so advocacy campaigns just don't work. One of the problems is that retailers don't have direct contact with their factories. Production is outsourced to the lowest bidders. Chains of sub contractors are set up and production is being split between thousands of factories. Labels from JC Penny, Wal-Mart and Joe Fresh were all found in the rubble of Rana plaza (O'Connor 2014), but none of them directly contracted those factories. With multitudes of middlemen accountability is difficult.

In this essay written by Lucy Siegle she explains the dangers of fast cheap fashion. She how seasonal fashion that is bought is thrown away and how it is bad for the ecosystem. Then she goes over what the consumer can do to fix the problem using facts and alternatives. Although the thesis is not given it is implied that the more we buy fast fashion the worse the ecosystem will get.

Fast Fashion is a worldwide epidemic that encourages and feeds capitalism, consumerism, and the end of our planet Earth. This is a detrimental 2-4 week cycle of designing clothes, manufacturing it, producing mass quantities of it, and spreading it throughout the world in stores like H&M, Forever 21, Zara, ASOS, and many other brands. These brands usually all get mass quantities of clothes from closely related sweatshops from countries where labor is cheap, and where safety laws and ethical human rights are not enforced: china, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. Production of clothes usually costs a small fraction of what they are selling it for, since all the materials are from regions all over the world the worth of a shirt is much less than what you are buying it for. The reason this vicious cycle is detrimental to our planet earth is because of the unending mass production. It manufactures unbelievable amounts of one item, because it will be gone in the next 2-4 weeks from the racks, and since they do not have enough time to remake the one item, they produce mass quantities of it and what is not sold is waste that is piling up all around our world in landfills.

Sweatshops a big issue in today’s society, even though their existence can sometimes stay hidden from the public’s eye. A famous author named Berry states, “ most of us get all the things we need by buying them and most of us know only vaguely, if at all, where those things came from; and most of us know not at all what damage is involved in their production. We are almost entirely dependent on an economy of which we are almost entirely ignorant.” The majority of people in the US have no idea where the clothes they are purchasing are actually coming from. Most people would not support the exploitation of their own race of people. If they were able to see and come to realization about what is actually happening they would have a much different change of heart.

Robert Swan once said “the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.” Two companies that understand this concept are Patagonia and Nike. How they address these issues regarding sustainable business practice vary, however. Both have made it their mission to deliver excellence and make the best quality products within their industries, Patagonia focussing more on outdoor active wear, while Nike is more sports oriented. Part of this process has been developing products from sustainable sources. Patagonia, for example, actively took a stand against chemical intensive cotton in 1994, and has since switched to less harmful means of organic cotton within all their cotton-based products. They are even going the extra

It is impossible to beat a cheap price. In today’s world, finding a sought after item at a dirt cheap price is one the main motivation American’s get in the car and battle the craziness in the mall. And as the basic American human beings that we are, it is never possible for us to be complacent with the amount of stuff we currently have. Eventually, we will come across a friend that has the next must have item that will cause us to run to our local mall and purchase a similar item at the lowest price possible. With all that said, it is no wonder why the industry of fast fashion has taken off over the past decade. Felipe Caro and Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, researchers for UCLA’s school of supply chain coordination, define fast fashion as “a business model that combines four elements: (i) fashionable clothes mostly for consumers under 40; (ii) affordable prices in the mid-to-low range; (iii) quick response; and (iv) frequent assortment changes”. Retailers like H&M, Forever 21, Target, and Wal-Mart have been able to take this business model and make a fortune. But while all these quick trends and cheap prices are great for the consumer, its cost on the foreign worker and the environment does not go uncovered. In the book Overdressed by Elizabeth Cline, she presents many arguments supporting the claim that fast fashion is unethical based on

Fashion is everything to society and the media. The fashion industry has transformed into a necessity in the life of people. Everyone wants to look good, feel fabulous and feel as if we belong with everyone else. The envy and desire to wear certain things and look a certain way all come, from wearing the latest fashion handbags, accessories, dresses, shoes, and the list goes on. But, when is considering fashion into an individual’s life going too far to the extreme? Many do not consider the whereabouts of fashion materials and how the environment is affected by the mere existence of certain garments. Some may believe these objects grow on trees. But that is clearly not the case. Even though it would be nice. The fashion industry as a

It is essential to select a representative and accurate sample. The population of interest this study will be the adults in Australia who are over 18 years old. In other words, a consumer should own understandings of fashion and unfashion independently. Due to time limitation, 4 samples come from QUT blackboard sources.

In this article, Barenblat outlines some of the key reasons as to why fast fashion is detrimental for women and the environment. The author supports her claim by suggesting fast fashion is expensive for the planet, encourages young women in poverty to work in sweatshops, and leads to million tons of landfill each year. This information in the article is useful because it provides relevant statistics on the damages caused by the clothing industry.

New employment agencies dealing with temp and contract workers face no shortage of challenges regarding profit margins. You need to meet your overhead costs (office rent and supplies, admin, compliance, etc.) and ensure that your team is securing target numbers for placements made.

Nordstrom has continued to improve their dedication to the environment, steps such as: reducing carbon dioxide released into the air, using organic cottons and investing time and money into the discovery of more sustainable fabric clarification. Although many of these steps may seem like obvious choices so many large companies are still struggling to make the leap nordstrom has shown in these areas. The hunt for more sustainable fabrics is in hopes to lower the unlawfully logged forests and continue to encourage other brands, which they outsource from to be aware of how and where their fabric materials are made. The ethical decision to improve their own environmental practices and inspire other brands to do the same shows they care about the recent changes in society and are willing to form to these

Fifty years ago almost all clothes sold in the U.S. were made here. Now almost 98% of the clothes sold here are made in other countries. For big retailers like Walmart, and Forever 21 they are able to sell clothes at low prices due to clothes being produced in other nation “where labor and other costs are less expensive,” as stated in “The Real Cost of Fashion.” How this works? Well, an example from “The Real Cost of Fashion.” Says, “For example, it costs $3.72 to manufacture a denim shirt in Bangladesh. To make that same shirt in the U.S. costs $13.22. Lower costs mean U.S. stores can sell clothes for less and still make a profit. For U.S. shoppers, it means more clothes in their closets and more money in their wallets to buy other things.” But three years ago, a tragedy occurred in a building in Bangladesh. 1,127 workers died while about 2,500 workers were injured when the building collapsed. This building contained five factories which made clothes to sell in the U.S. and Europe. Officials then discovered the owner of the building illegally added more floors and let the companies place heavy gear that the building wasn’t sturdy enough to support. According to “The Real Cost of Fashion,” Bangladesh’s government “temporarily closed about 20 factories for safety violations. It also announced plans to raise the country’s minimum wage. Bangladesh has some of the lowest-paid workers in the world.” They get paid less than $2 day. It

started “outsourcing more, consuming more, using more resources, and paying less” (The True Cost). This equates to subtracting massive numbers and only adding single digits in an effort to make zero. It simply does not work. Instead, unskilled workers and innocent citizens of developing countries must compensate for the atrocious subtracting of the “fast fashion” industry. Their compensation ranges from uncontrollable seizures to infertility, and from difficulty breathing to watching their children grow up with significant mental and physical disabilities. This is the True

According to the film, the transnational corporations dominate the economic side of the clothing industry; for example, H&M had consumer demands for “fast fashion” at a low price, and often for products that are unavailable during particular fashion seasons; therefore, the stores then must outsource their supply orders with foreign sources, such as developing countries of Bangladesh or Cambodia. In fact, 97% of our clothes in America are outsourced, which aids in the concept of “fast fashion,” or the idea of something new in clothing market comes in every week to make the price tags go down for the consumer. As Sklair points out, “neither the retailer nor the consumer needs to know or care where the product comes from,” just as long as they receive the clothing product at the cheapest price nothing else tends to matter; however, “many campaigning groups,” like the True Cost film, “make sure that customers know that some products comes from, like sweatshops in the East” (Lechner & Boli, 2015, pg. 65). Therefore, it is easy to see how transnational corporations take over the economic side of the clothing industry; they outsource their

Many people in The United States do not specifically know how their clothing is being made and what the living conditions are like for the people who make them. Blood, sweat, sacrifice, and tears have gone into the production of garments in Bangladesh and Hannan Majid and Richard York show it through the film they produced The Machinists. The three factory workers featured in the documentary are Mohammed and his wife, Nargis who lives with her parents and two sisters who also work in the factory, and Ratna a single woman involved in a union to help workers understand their rights. Also being analyzed are The Rana Plaza Garment Factory deaths caused by the collapse of the poorly constructed building in Dhaka shown in the documentary Fashion Victims produced by ABC Australia. It is very easy to look at the garment industry from an outside perspective and attempt to conjure up an effective solution. However, are U.S. consumers willing to give up designer clothing for a virtuous conscience? Can U.S. consumers strip the elephant in the room of its designer clothing and address the underlying problems of Exploitation of Garment Factory Workers in Bangladesh by Multi-National Corporations? We will be analyzing the garment workers starring in this documentary and what are the social reasons why U.S. consumers