A Wren Says

I’m just finishing up a webinar with Vogue Business on the push for fashion to move manufacturing closer to their headquarters. With this push to move out of the traditional manufacturing countries comes costs and benefits. In particular, a key cost is that countries like the U.S. and the U.K. have higher labor costs. Employees who would then be tapped to make the products in those countries would need to be paid. That cost would then be shifted to the consumer in terms of higher product costs. The question then is, “Is it worth it to you?”

If this push happens industry wide, are you willing to support that change with your money? Are you willing to shift from just talking about it to put your money on it? In all of these conversations about the rights of workers and the needs to pay living wages, have you considered that you might be part of the solution and that you can share your opinion by what you are willing to pay for?

The whole conversation is more nuanced and won’t be fully addressed in such a short article. But it is an important question. How are we as consumers willing to show brands that this matters to us? Or are we going to shift to just finding the cheapest options, despite the true costs?