~air fooled~ wrote:me and the missus were having a similar conversation last night about how much clothing is actually 'worth' as a physical piece of material vs the price you pay in shops, especially 'brand name' gear...
Not much, a t-shirt probably has about 5c worth of materials in it. But there's more to it then that.
It has 5 c materials + labour cost to manufacture, labour cost to sell, depreciation of machinery to manufacture, salary of finance, maintenance and customer service staff at place of manufacture. Maintenance of buildings, payment of rates etc etc.
So by this point we have a t-shirt in a bag on a pallet. Most likely in China. By the time you add all the costs mentioned it's "cost" price might now be $2, they sell them at a profit for $2.50.
Then it gets bought by a company over here lets call them "Lust Jeans". And they get it shipped over here. So by the time they pay shipping the shirt owes them $4.
Now this is where it gets expensive. The shirts are distributed to stores, the stores are in flashy air conditioned shopping centres that charge ridiculous rent and the stores require several staff at $20 dollars an hour just to stand there and ask the customers if they need help whether they buy anything or not.
"Lust Jeans" also has a head office that has sales, marketing, IT, HR staff etc etc all with coffee addictions that require huge salaries and an air conditioned office in the middle of Sydney.
The Marketing department spends millions a years advertising "Lust Jeans" on TV and in Magazines with expensive and beautiful people in there catalogues and commercials.
So lets say with all this the T-Shirt owes them $15 to break even.
When they sell the shirt they have to pay the bank for the use of the EFTPOS machine or Credit card transaction (3%?) and they have to pay the government 10% GST. So the T-Shirt Owes them $18 to sell.
The Share holders of "Lust Jeans" are a greedy bunch that require them to make a profit. Apparently it's not a charity organisation.
So the Store sells the 5c T-Shirt $25.
