Is American Apparel Transparent Enough?

In my International Communications class this morning we talked about the issue of companies outsourcing to have their product made “on the cheap.” Companies can get away with this, because people never think or care about where a product is made. They just want to get as much bang for their buck.

But increasingly, however, more Americans are spending time to think about the concept of fair trade and where a product is made. Large companies are aware of this and have started branding their product as locally produced product or if it is made outside of the U.S. then the workers are paid fair wages. Just look at American Apparel for instance. The entire company is based on the premise that the product is made in the U.S. and their employees are compensated sufficiently.

The public relations department has done a great job of reaching a certain level of transparency by posting extensive information on how the product is made. They also devote a good portion of time making sure the public is aware of where the company stands on a variety hot issues. Immigration is one of those issues.

There is one problem, though. When looking at the Web site, it is impossible to find any information on where American Apparel gets the materials to make the clothes. For customers that want to support ethical or fair-wage companies, they need to be concerned with the entire process of how one shirt or one pair of pants is created. Take a blue cotton t-shirt for example.

Who picks the cotton?

Who dyes the cotton?

Who weaves the cotton?

Where does the thread that is use to sew the shirt come from?

These are all steps that have to be done before someone at the American Apparel factory sews together the cotton to form that blue shirt.

I hesitate to say that this is American Apparel’s dirty little secret, because I personally do not know where American Apparel gets their materials from and how those materials are made. But they must have thought about these steps and whether or not it was a good idea to disclose these steps in the manufacturing process to the public. A company like American Apparel needs to be as transparent as possible to keep folks like myself from questioning the authenticity of their “sweat free” claims. The key problem or challenge is finding the point where the public no longer feels the need to seek out more information. As a journalism student, I want to know everything. Facts are great. But not everyone is like me. So supplying just the right amount of information helps American Apparel keep its image intact by essentially giving the public a peep hole to look through. They can see inside the company – but not enough to see corner offices where the those in charge of production are devising a plan to save five cents here and there.

American Apparel’s image has been taking a hit in the recent months. So it should be interesting to see how the company copes now that they have gone public and have been looked at in a entirely new light.