About design detail, maybe this is why I like vintage clothing and stuff older than that. Most of today’s stuff is too simple.

In some cases where many of the materials inputs do, in fact, come from here, it seems the cost of shipping to another country would cancel out the savings in manufacturing labor.

I haven’t read through the comments, only your post, but that last sentence (don’t know if you coined it, Kathleen) is the tightest, sharpest and best piece of advice any domestic DE could ever hear. I am going to post that on the bulletin board in front of my desk, dead center, so I see it all day every day. And I am not kidding.

It’s very true when you go by the SBA’s definition of small business– however, one really huge area for concern that you will find is that, particularly among women, a high number of businesses (around 60%– I’d have to search to find the stats on that) only employ the owner, and barely provide full-time salary at that ($50K annual GROSS revenue).

So collectively speaking, small biz is more profitable and employs more people, collectively, the majority of small businesses (at least those that are women owned) are micro businesses that don’t provide jobs.

And for that reason, I think there’s a growing movement to teach financial management, growth and management skills, to move more businesses out of that revenue category into one that provides jobs.

As far as people who took on risky debt they could not handle, irresponsible is irresponsible no matter how you cut it. Those that went out of control with their businesses usually were out of control with their personal finances (and I have yet to meet the person that’s an exception to that rule) and shouldn’t merit consideration when formulating strategies or stances on such issues. It’s just something I’ve learned about people in business over the years. You can determine character markers that distinguish between those who will ultimately make it and those who will just spin their wheels and fizzle out (or go up in flames).

I think what happened with the apparel industry is a typical level of arrogance that “made in America” would mean something significant to a large enough percentage of the population, to the point where competitive advantages were no longer sustained or sought. Consumers aren’t necessarily “cheap” but we (the industry) doesn’t do a good job of combatting the widely held perception that we produce stuff in sweatshops for thirteen cents a day and mark it up to $300 in boutiques and top shelf department stores. We’ve done absolutely nothing to educate customers on the true price of production. People, generally, have a more realistic view of what it costs to make the goods they consume– except when it comes to fashion.

You never see someone in the store saying “I know they make this Captain Crunch for twenty eight cents and have the audacity to sell it to me for nearly three dollars”, but betcha they believe $120 Nikes cost $4 to make by blind Cambodian children in a richshack indentured servitude camp serving one meal a day with no restroom breaks. Try it yourself, walk up to the average person and say do you know a box of captain crunch costs twenty eight cents to produce (including the box) and they won’t believe you but if you say that Nikes only cost four dollars to make, they will say “I knew it, I knew Nike was getting over!”

Whether you choose to go public depends on your goals and working style. Personally, I don’t have the business or financial sophistication to even contemplate the transition so I’d settle for acquisition. Which is not to say I don’t admire people who can do it. It’s overwhelming to me.

Which businesses I prefer depends on context.

I prefer small businesses in several respects. For one, they employ more people than large ones. Second, dividing head count by total sales, they’re more profitable. They also tend to spend a greater percentage of their money locally which benefits the community.

I prefer larger businesses because their operational practices are more professional. How it is that smaller businesses are more profitable than large ones considering their comparative operational inefficiencies, I’ll never understand. I suspect it’s related to transaction costs which escalate dramatically in far flung enterprises.

Then, there’s the matter of scale. I’ve long said that different enterprises are optimally suited to different scales. Industries with a higher engineering component are better suited to large scale. The closer to the dirt you are, the smaller you should be (optimally). The example I cite most often is agriculture. The most efficient farms are 80 acres. I firmly believe there’s a governance with regard to apparel firms too altho I struggle to define it. I used to think firms ideally have no more than 200 stitchers. Lately tho, I’m thinking it’s less, maybe even dramatically fewer, say only 20. We’re not far from the dirt on the scale of needs hierarchy. First it’s food, then clothing, then shelter. Most builders are also not large and they’re also regional…

Anyhow, back to my point, some DEs need to stay small and debt-free because they are incapable of managing anything else. But the reality is small and debt free businesses usually don’t create jobs. They are usually solely-owner-operated ventures (or employ mostly family) as typically, once you have payroll, a lot of businesses (again) have credit lines to serve as a back up to cyclical cash flow.

So I guess my point is I suppose it does good to say stay small and debt free, but on the other hand, it’s almost counter productive to growing the domestic garment industry. And in a very interesting socio-economic twist, it’s usually an argument pushed by women to women which (I believe) is one of the reasons women owned businesses (statistically) tend to gross less than male owned businesses and why as women owned businesses grow, they tend to hire men to run them– because we aren’t socialized to grow and to properly manage money and debt in a business sense.

Anyhow, I just threw my two cents in, as that struck a chord with me.