Pricing on any garmet depends on several factors.
Anything made off shore can cost a fraction of the retail price. For example the REI One jacket costs $30.00 to make using foreign labour for qty of 1000 or more per color.
The same jacket made here in the USA for qty of 500-1000 or less would cost about half the retail at $75.00 if using generic knock-off fabric. Over 1000 pieces and a small percentage for manufacturing discount begins.
as for
"...in house brands...", besides Arc'teryx which was up until 2 years ago all made in shops in Canada. Most major outdoor brands including Patagonia, Mountain Hardwear, the Northface, etc, etc have their clothes, which are still allocated for USA manufacture (*a very small percentage of total output), made often times in the East Bay of California. There are several major hubs of outdoor manufacturing all within 20 miles of each other in the East Bay. In fact one of the largest or best known called "Mt Everest" which is downtown Oakland, has 5 or 6 floors of sewers making outdoor garments and gear. SOP for any of these factories is to make the gear for whatever brand they have a contract. On any given day a factory like that will be sewing things for 4 or 5 major brands including patagonia or mtn hardwear, they will even sew for small local outfits like TAD gear. this is the norm. much of manufacturing done this way. where do you think big O tires are made? the goodyear factory.
well gooollly! i wouldn't uh thunk uh dat billie bob!... the same SOP for off shore production as well. those same sweat shops in asian sew for several major well know brands, as well as lesser known.
btw, the same tired ladies do all the sewing no matter what country it is. they're all asian and latin.
pricing depends largely on qty and which materials you use. the more generic the fabric and higher qty, the cheaper the cost and of course retail.
so the mark up on a REI jacket is tremendous. this helps pad the sales of other non-REI brand products which is typically 20-40%. even markdown their ONE jacket to 40 bucks and they are still making 10 bucks.
90% of the northface product is made in China and in huge qtys.
USA made outdoor garments is 4 times the price for labour. fabric like malden mills powershield softshell fleece(a standard high qual softshell) is something like $20-24 a yard. takes about 2 or more yards to make a softshell jacket.
very few outfits in the US will sew less than 1000 pieces. the labour can double in price for a factory's "trouble" to sew less than the std min of 1000 pieces..
feel free to check with malden mills or mt everest for production costs and material costs. do the research and do the math.
there are some awesome deals out there. end of season sales, blow outs, mega chain production, can fetch some dreamy-creamy prices for penny pinching bargain hunters. heck with this current ecomony where the top 1% are getting richer on their tax breaks and the working class are paying for it, bargains are welcome any day of the week.
there's kmarts and there's barney's.
hey, let's start to bitch and moan on how expensive a randall, onion, or strider knife is! i know some awesome knife deals on the knife collectors channel!
let's all go over there and brag about the killa deals we just got there homey! phat yo!
i can't afford a mercedes G-wagen, its hella expensive, but i don't cry about it or complain like a little girl b/c i can't get one or found a slammin deal on a VW thing. i am happy with my jeep b/c that's what i can afford.
i love my made in Canada arc'teryx soft shell, cost me $300 bones. I love my made in USA TAD softshell hoodie, retails for $189.00. I love my made in mexico Patagonia fleece cardigan cost around $175.00. i'll pass on the kmart brand stuff even if it's a dreamy-creamy lowball bargain hunter's wet dream.
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I bet that hoodie is extremely comfortable.