Garment Manufacturing: Foreign vs. US-Based Companies
The Main Street Exchange in Lancaster, PA was launched more than a decade ago. Initially, the company purchased most of its items from other brands, but over time, owner Jennifer Smucker built the company to the point of beginning to create and offer her exclusive designs under the brand's own label. Starting with local manufacturers, such as Lancaster Sewing Company which still sews for the business, she eventually branched out to find overseas manufacturers in China through websites like Alibaba that vet and present many different manufacturing companies on their platform.
As a brand, The Main Street Exchange is committed to modesty, beauty, integrity, opportunity, compassion, and kindness. We seek to embody those values in all of our interactions, not only with our customers but also with our business partners. The goal of this post is to provide some insight for shoppers who want to know more about where and how their purchases are being sourced.
The major reasons for using overseas manufacturers, in addition to a US manufacturer, are affordability and accessibility. Garment manufacturing has declined in the United States over the past several decades for a wide variety of reasons. With that decline, the cost of producing items here has increased significantly. In addition to high labor costs, feeder industries, such as cloth and trim manufacturing, have also decreased, which makes sourcing fabric and notions within the USA much more time-consuming, difficult, and limited than it would have been at one time.
On the other hand, Southeast Asia and some other parts of the globe, such as Central and South America, have extensive manufacturing ecosystems that make sourcing and production much easier and more affordable. As The Main Street Exchange grew, it made sense to explore overseas manufacturing as an option to help keep the brand affordable to the average customer.
To this day, we hold the tension between seeking to keep our clothing prices as affordable as we can while also sourcing them as ethically as we can. Simultaneously, it’s essential to maintain the profit margins necessary to run a business successfully, which involves paying for location, labor, marketing, and more. We don’t navigate these competing challenges perfectly, but we do seek to operate with integrity and openness.
The choice to utilize an overseas company came with the recognition that for some time we did not know much about the conditions or processes used to create our garments. Periodically, we received questions from customers regarding the “Made in China” label in our garments. Questions like: “Why are you using foreign manufacturers instead of U.S. companies? How do you know those companies don’t utilize child labor?” and so on. Like many businesses, we operated under the good faith assumption that these companies were vetted by the platforms that promote them and that they follow ethical practices towards their employees – the same assumption we extend to all of our partners, locally and globally.
With those questions in mind, the team periodically discussed the idea of visiting our manufacturing partners in China with the goal of strengthening the relationships between our company and the businesses that we work with there. We also hoped to see and understand more about their processes and working conditions firsthand.
In October of 2023, Cheryl, the manager of product development who coordinates and communicates with the overseas manufacturers to order exclusive MSE branded designs, and Alicia, the product manager responsible for handling incoming shipments, traveled to Guangzhou, China.
Guangzhou is a major manufacturing center and shipping port in Guangdong province located on the southeastern coast of China. China is actually one of the more expensive places to do garment production in southeast Asia because their labor costs are higher compared to places like Vietnam and Bangladesh (see article). However, the cost of labor and raw materials in China is still significantly lower than in the U.S., which makes for more affordable finished goods, even with higher shipping costs.
The team spent 5 days in-country and visited two of The Main Street Exchange’s primary manufacturers during that time. One of the companies makes many of our exclusive dress designs, while the other produces most of the brand’s denim styles. They also had the opportunity to visit one of the massive and amazing fabric markets in the city, which was simultaneously fun, fascinating, and a little overwhelming.
Alicia and Cheryl found their Chinese hosts to be incredibly welcoming and hospitable and thoroughly enjoyed getting to tour the factories, meet some of the team members, and learn more about the multitude of steps required to take a design from concept to finished product, ready to be shipped to the United States and made available for customers to shop.
This was not an investigative trip. But what the team members saw and experienced was open communication with the companies they visited and opportunities to observe a slice of everyday operations within the two factories they toured. They did not observe any red flags such as child labor or unsafe working conditions.
They also enjoyed strengthening their relationships with the representatives they communicate with on a regular basis. It was invaluable to experience the personal, human side of a business relationship, all of which made the visit a highly positive and rewarding experience!
We recognize that product sourcing is always changing. These are our current practices, and we want to maintain healthy relationships with our existing partners. But we are also open to exploring new options and opportunities as we encounter them. If you have any further questions about this topic, please feel free to reach out to Alicia (buyer@mseapparel.com) or Cheryl (design@mseapparel.com).
