Not All T-Shirts Are Created Equal, Part 3: Country of Manufacture

One more thing that we put a lot of research into in the beginning, is where we want our garments made. For the Launch Collection, I made it a point to have everything 100% Made in the USA. This may have backfired somewhat, because as you know, it’s not cheap to manufacture locally and many of you don’t want to pay $35  bucks for a T-shirt! However, you get excellent quality control and can take pride in an American made product.

So a couple things are happening I think - First, the quality coming out of overseas factories is also very, very good. Excellent, in fact, and can be produced at a much lower cost.

Second, I am now putting more emphasis on how the product is made, and not where the product is made. Let me explain - we’ve all heard stories about sweatshops and such and that whole situation is bad for everyone, including the workers, companies, and customers in my opinion.

Originally we launched with American Apparel. Their factory is in Los Angeles, CA and their claim to fame was a product Made in the USA by workers getting paid a fair wage with proper benefits. So that is awesome, we are all for that. But you get what you pay for, so sourcing from them increased our base cost significantly, especially since we’re a small startup and not purchasing 1,000 shirts at a time

So for our upcoming release, we started looking at going overseas, and found a garment factory that is W.R.A.P. Certified, which is granted by an independent group of social compliance experts that make sure this factory is certified safe, lawful, humane and ethical. W.R.A.P. accreditation validates that the factory’s already-high standards go above and beyond the practices they monitor and certify. So we can still feel good about partnering with this new supplier. For our new collection, we will have products produced in Kenya, Nicaragua, and China.

With this in place, we hope to bring our costs down but still offer a high-quality product at a more reasonable price to all the ADV Addicts out there. We do, however, still design and print everything in the good ‘ol US of A of course! All of our finishing touches are also done in the US, like our custom made hem tags, custom inside tag printing, and even most our packaging products, such as clear bags and mailers, are made in the US as well out of recycled content.