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Comment by latchkey | Hacker News Reader

Living in Vietnam, I don't believe this article for a second. Clothing manufacturing is unbelievably massive here. It isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

Clothing is a commodity item, even if it takes a week or a month to ship to the US, it does not matter. If you need it faster, raise the prices (or take a hit on the massive retail markup) and ship it faster (air vs. boat).

Having also built a successful print on demand business, we did all our printing in the US because the customers were in the US and the shipping times would have been too great because of the on-demand nature.

The garments themselves come from other countries. Notably, the people creating the designs and buying the FB ads, which target US consumers, are in SE Asia (mostly in Vietnam). Only people in the US will pay $25+ for a t-shirt that costs $1 to $4 to produce.

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Someone in 1920's UK:

"Living in Manchester, I don't believe this for a second. Cloth and clothing manufacture has become unbelievably massive throughout Lancashire since the spinning jenny in 1760. Manchester wasn't called Cottonopolis for the last 100 years for nothing. It isn't going anywhere soon."

They produced for all levels of the market from the cheapest to the most premium. Mostly cloth, but a big apparel industry on the back of it.

By the time of WW2, almost half a million had left the industry. Through the 50s and 60s mills and garment makers were closing weekly. By the 1970s or 1980s there was essentially nothing left. Nothing in stores is UK made any more, except the highest end and bespoke.

Cheap T's and the like will probably always come from wherever's cheapest. For the rest, never say never. :)

I noticed some jeans I bought a while ago had a label that said they were made in Lesotho (which is not in Asia).

A motorcycle I owned in 2009 was made in Thailand.

A car I owned in 2011 was made in South Africa.

These are all things being imported into the US.

China and India make a lot of things because they are big, but that doesn't mean the rest of the world does nothing or that tomorrow large parts of the world will close up shop.

So you're saying it'll take 2-3 decades? Sounds like you're agreeing that it won't go anywhere fast and instead will take 20-40 years?

Depends what you call fast. Fast enough to cause deprivation more than likely, and the usual bell curve. For a career, an industry almost completely exiting in half a working lifetime might be thought fast by many outside IT. :)

Some will leave early, most when some tipping point is reached, and some will hang on for decades. Something different will fill the gap.

10 years .. shorter supply chains is going to be trend in post-brettonwoods world. The free-traders and multilateral trade agreement people lost the fight both on left and right in USA. Prima facie evidence TPP.

I could see it being much faster than that. As someone working in automation, a lot of our recent work is involved with automating tech and car manufacturing in Vietnam. I could easily see a shift away from textiles and into more advanced manufacturing very soon.

Investors everywhere drool at the idea that automation can make employees redundant - they're expensive and one of the biggest sources of risk in a business. Employees make investors super jittery.

I think the Trump trade war has only elevated those jitters. Investors are terrified at the prospect of paying an American $15 / hour what they used to pay $4 for in Vietnam.

The demand for automation is very, very, very high because of this. This drives a lot of investment which pushes up developer wages. It also means that a lot of people seeking investment aren't 100% truthful about what is possible and what isn't in their press releases.

Which is how we get this:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/06/artificia...

I think that this charade of "we will eventually automate 100% of the world out of a job" is kind of the silicon valley religion. Challenging it means violating a taboo - it threatens the torrent of cash being funneled into our ecosystem and, frankly, undermines the very core of the power we hold.

Keep in mind the numbers quoted in the article:

25% of those surveyed said 50% of their clothes will be "nearshored" by 2025.

So within 7 years (ballpark number) 12.5% of clothes will be nearshored.

That sounds pretty plausible. It's not exactly a titanic shift, more of a gradual one And looking at the chart backs up those kind of numbers. Fewer companies have 0-10% nearshored and more companies having 10-30% nearshored.

Of course, the survey is a bit misleading because it isn't volume-weighted. If 100 boutiques use nearshoring but Walmart doesn't...

Also keep in mind that "nearshoring" doesn't mean "moving back to the US and Western Europe". If you read the linked McKinsey study it means "moving to Mexico and Turkey because the US and Germany are still way too expensive even with full automation".

I also live in Vietnam :)

Your calculations weren't quite correct because you didn't account for all the different survey answers. If you account for all of them, right now about 21% [0] of clothes are nearshored, and in 7 years about 30% of clothes will be nearshored. That's about a 45% increase in the amount of clothing nearshored or 13% decrease in the amount of clothes manufactured overseas. Vietnam's share might still increase though because it may take more of the declining Asian share.

[0]: Using the midpoint between the two survey options and 60% for 50%+: 6.21 + .45.03 + .35.04 + .25.05 + .15.15 + .075.18 + .025.33 = .21025 [1]: With the same method: .6.24 + .45.04 + .35.14 + .25.18 + .15.22 + .075.15 + .025.03 = .301

They’ve also been writing roughly the same article for years.

Here’s one from 2014

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/business/article91482...

It does contain some interesting things about the cost of cotton and this quote which struck me.

Said Wang: “Except for human labor, all other production factors are cheaper in the U.S.”

I wonder if that’s still the case. The parent article exists so maybe it is...

>Only people in the US will pay $25+ for a t-shirt that costs $1 to $4 to produce.

As a Westerner this drives me nuts about about buying clothes. Every time I buy any article of clothing I feel it right in the sphincter, getting ripped off 10x - 100x. Is there any way for folks in NA/Europe/etc to get clothes at or near cost?

You should be annoyed. I routinely buy 'name brand' clothes here in Vietnam and I pay $4-5 for a shirt or shorts that have $50 price tags attached to them.

Just curious. Are they made with the same specs or are they lower-quality counterfeits? I used to check out some cheap knock-offs in another SE Asian country and they were all lower quality than genuine items.

The answer is 'it depends'. There is different grades of knockoffs and it is pretty easy to spot low quality ones. The fabric is thinner, the sewing isn't quite right. So far, I've only had issues with poorly made cheap shoes falling apart. Regular clothes have generally been excellent and I can't tell the difference.

Yes, you buy them directly from the Asian companies, just don't expect being able to change if they don't fit, becaus1 even when they accept to do it the round trip takes too long.

Don't know about the US, but here in the UK places like Primark and Mountain Warehouse have t-shirts for £6.

I haven't bought clothes in the states for a while, but I did go to a "TJ Max" (apparently unrealated to TK Maxx) and from memory didn't seem terrible prices.

Bought some underwear from a Duane Reade in NY just before Hurricane Sandy hit which was a reasonable price -- I was on the last flight into Newark, but my suitcase wasn't. That was the last time I've checked luggage.

Actually they are related, renamed in Britain to avoid confusion with a British retailer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TK_Maxx

Why don't you buy clothes from a thrift store? Maybe you (or maybe not...) don't want to look like a hobo.

Why does wearing clothes from a thrift store make you look like a hobo? Because they are so cheap, people with very little money can buy them.

That is why clothes are so expensive. They, to a certain degree, flaunt your wealth, or at least show that you probably aren't a hobo. This is pretty important to people, or no one would pay so much for clothes.

I have a dozen black t-shirts from Primark for about 2.50£ per t-shirt.

> Why don't you buy clothes from a thrift store?

It will drive the price up and hurt people with very little money.

Not really, donation clothing is skyrocketing (because people consume more and more clothing from cheap brands like H&M) and stores like Value Village or Good Will can't actually accept every piece of clothing donated to them. Lots of it end up on cargos back to Africa or Asia. Buy from thrift stores, this is a good thing and good for environment.

My questions were rhetorical. I was trying to explain why I believe clothes are expensive in wealthy areas, not asking about you personally.

> I have a dozen black t-shirts

A man after my own heart. > from Primark.

Try Tesco, they are 2 for £8 but they last forever, dont fade and look the same after a couple dozen washes as they did new, also they never run.

I find the fit better and they keep their shape without going saggy around the collar.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Blu-Cherry-Premium-Assorted-Multico...

3 tshirts for £13.50 delivered next day to your door. That's $5.80 each. I have no idea where you'd pay 4 times that.

On the other hand I couldn't find a pair of socks in Nairobi last month for under about $15. Clearly I didn't know where to look, but it goes to show that there's always stores charging shocking amounts.

(https://www.amazon.co.uk/FIND-Socks-Mixed-Stripe-Medium/dp/B... -- $2/pair

It is not that you are getting Rip-Off, There is at least $15 going into Retail Rental, Staff, Operation, All these cost are 10x higher in US than Vietnam.

Vietnam is actually profiting from the trade war

The tariffs are aimed at China, not at Vietnam.

(However, Vietnam has terribly high import tariffs, especially on cars, and it is annoying US car manufacturers. And electronics is also surprisingly expensive here, maybe also because of the import tariffs?)

Vietnam is now making their own cars too! Imported cars are 200%+ tax, which is great because it is keeping the numbers of cars lower (better for a motorbike based culture). Sure makes you pause at how wealthy people are here when you see a Lambo driving around Saigon.

Vietnamese also generally can't drive well at all, the education and penalties are mediocre at best. Huge numbers of road deaths here. There is videos all the time of someone mistaking gas for brake or drunkly running over a few motorbikes [1] (Lucky she is rich, she will likely not face any jail time and the articles about it have magically stopped).

[1] https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/saigon-woman-arrested-in-d...

Wow, that sounds bad. I've read that bad driving is somewhat similar in Thailand. (Similar in India too.) Know anything about it?

Trade war has nothing to do with it. It's rising wages in china.

For more than a decade, manufacturers ( even chinese companies ) have been shifting production to vietnam.

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/18/business/worldbusiness/18...

Labor costs a much cheaper in vietnam.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/744071/manufacturing-lab...

What do you think of Sewbots, which made quite a few headlines last year?

http://softwearautomation.com/products/

“A new t-shirt sewing robot can make as many shirts per hour as 17 factory workers” https://qz.com/1064679/a-new-t-shirt-sewing-robot-can-make-a...

Didn't Tesla over automate things?

I think any downtime for that machine is going to be really expensive. The more those machines do, the more they cost when they aren't doing what they need to do. Human labor, is plentiful and cheap. A worker who is out sick can be immediately replaced by 100 others waiting in the wings.

Factories can support redundancy too, can’t they? It means higher cost. But technology costs go down over time while labor costs typically go up in a given country.

Tesla tried to automate too much too soon but it appears Sewbots are quite ready to be deployed and their capabilities and reliability will likely improve in the future.

A worker needs to be trained, and willing to work. And has huge medical liabilities, along with tons of other clerical duties. With machines you don’t need to worry about them getting to work, sexual harassment, unemployment insurance, etc.

Of course there is a point where humans make more sense than machines, but the formers cost keeps rising while the latter’s cost keeps dropping, so the trend is clear unless that dynamic changes.

or kubernetes for sewbots

Clothing is fashion which is culture. The design, marketing, promotion, and customer relations and support or repair work best with local players. If a shirt can be sold for $25 then a fast moving and tuned in group with good client lists and promotional channels can and will dominate sales. The margins will be greatly reduced but the products will be superior. Customers are driven to best product fit not highest corporate margins.

> Only people in the US will pay $25+ for a t-shirt that costs $1 to $4 to produce

Does anyone have any solid numbers for this? When I've been in Asia buying cheap clothes usually the quality is terrible. Branded stores in Asia seemed similarly expensive still. In US outlet malls I regularly see Asian tourists from many countries buying clothes to take home.

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