Disclaimer - I've been wanting to write this article on Made in China for a while. Especially since the (sometimes heated) debates that we discovered in a previous article: that of the Epicure Paris brand.
Epicure's entrepreneurs were being pushed around because they had the honesty (or misfortune, it depends) to be transparent about their production chain (sheep in Australia, spinning in Italy and knitting in China). .
Based on my discussions with people like Ming Yin (Three Animals) and Thibaut Roblin (Epicure Paris) who produce totally or partly in China...
...and others like Vincent Louis Voinchet (La Comédie Humaine), Bertrand Urban (Duke & Dude), Maxime Van Rothem ( De Bonne Facture ) who asked themselves a lot of questions between producing in France or in the rest of the world. 'Europe, I now have a clear opinion on the matter.
Especially since opinions strongly converge: some who had fully launched into the adventure of Made in France are abandoning it today... you will see why.
Made in China : between myth and reality
“Buying Chinese means condoning the poor working conditions of workers”
When I see this kind of scandalous video, it disappoints me to see that major channels focus on the most miserable aspect of a subject, obscuring everything else. In the same way, if we believed this press, all the people in Lens would be fans of tuning, all professional athletes would be millionaires, all Americans would be fat and without health insurance, and Turkey would be a country populated by veiled women and fat people. macho.
Except that real life isn't reality TV. By digging a little deeper into a subject you quickly realize that it is false. And NO, a Michael Moore scandal video will never be gospel, it is at best pornography ( in the strict sense of the term: representing reality in a complacent and obscene manner ).
Sure, the people in these reports exist, but knowingly ignoring other sides of a story is a lie of omission . No, Chinese workers are not armies of hungry little mice who work for a dollar an hour, without social security, by candlelight and without a ventilation system, before returning to their cage.
In 2013, the average cost of labor in China is only half of the average cost in the United States, and it is increasing on average by 20% per year (sources: Boston Consulting Group). And it will exceed 60% in 2015.
Western brands that relocated to China at the end of the 20th century brought work and capital to these populations, while increasing your purchasing power with imported products that cost less. In the space of a few decades, millions of third world citizens have left poverty behind and accessed a middle-class way of life: education, culture, transport, health, environment, expanded political freedoms, thanks to globalization. If everything is not perfect, I still find it difficult to see what argument would tip the scales in the negative.
Note: Once again, I'm not saying that everything is fine and that a Chinese factory is the closest thing to the kingdom of care bears on Earth. But I want to show that we have to put a little (a lot) of water in our wine when we point the finger at China in 2013.
Here are two photos: I took one of them in Portland in the United States, during my visit to the factory of one of the most beautiful outdoor brands in the world. The other photo is of a Chinese textile factory, found randomly on Google Image. It's up to you to tell me which photo corresponds to which...
To tell you the truth, China has become too expensive for most textile brands who want to reduce their manufacturing costs in 2013. They prefer India, the Philippines or Bangladesh. If these countries are not really good places to live today, they will be at the level of China tomorrow, and perhaps Singapore the day after tomorrow. And that's all the bad we can wish them.
“Buying Chinese means killing the business in France”
As I just said, in 2013, the average cost of labor in China is only half of the average cost in the United States, and it is increasing on average by 20% per year ( source: Boston Consulting Group ). Still according to BCG, it will exceed 60% in 2015. There remains a difference of 40%, but which is largely erased when we subtract transport costs, customs duties, exchange costs and other expenses linked to initial investment.
In the end, if certain companies choose to return to Europe, it is often because the cost differences have faded, and probably not out of patriotic or odd quality duty, as our Minister of Productive Recovery would have us believe.
Very nice op Arnaud: +5 points of favorable opinions on housewives.
Finally, competition is not based on the same type of product : brands are more likely to entrust production with low and medium added value to Asian subcontractors. Some of the very high-end and technological innovation remains in Europe, because the Chinese do not necessarily master textile know-how like certain subtly waxed costume fabrics which come out of the Cerruti factories in Biella, near Milan ( I was able to visit them this month with Julian Cerruti who explained it to me, article to come). Conversely , the Chinese also master know-how that we do not master.
Finally, the labor component of a high-end product is less important than in a low-end product. For example, a low-end sweater will cost €8 (including €6 for labor, or 75% of the cost, and €2 for synthetic materials), while a high-end sweater will cost €30 ( including €10 for labor and €20 for quality materials with special treatments). The call for offshoring is therefore less strong for high-end products , because only labor costs decrease.
“Buying Chinese means choosing a lower quality product”
A former Hermès employee recently confided to me that what limits the quality of Chinese production is neither technological know-how nor the qualification of the workforce, but rather the specifications of the donor. Western order . Because Western brands first came to seek economies of scale in China, and as such produced for mass markets. The luxury houses that arrived later quickly realized that by asking the worker to spend more hours on each product, we obtained production that was just as good as in Europe (excluding know-how and production technologies). points).
Furthermore, the argument of the lack of Chinese know-how is both historically and trendily false, including for clothing made in China .
Historically false because China was for millennia a great cultural nation, with a very refined way of life. For Western countries, Chinese products (silk, spices, cashmere, jewelry) were synonymous with unparalleled quality and know-how. They were transported to Europe by the famous silk routes, then by boat when the first maritime routes were discovered with technological progress in the naval industry (routes to India).
The 20th century then passed through, with great wars, massacres, and a regime that caused the greatest famine known to date . Then the use of China as a country of copying and low-cost production in the second part of the century. It is difficult in these conditions to perpetuate luxury know-how, but that does not mean that they have disappeared.
Finally, the argument of non-Chinese quality is tendentially false because the emergence of the Chinese middle and wealthy classes has given rise to a consumer of clothing made in China or not, both interested in the quality and local origin of the product. This has the effect of reviving and growing ancestral know-how, while giving rise to new designers (Ming, if you read us...), who are giving birth to the new generation of luxury brands. The proof ? We are already starting to talk to you about brands like Three Animals or Mannequin, and in the next 5 years, this will only increase.
Hermès launched Shang Xia for example.
Clothing made in France: is everything for the best in the best of all worlds?
I'm not telling you anything: Made in China VS Made in France is one of those subjects that quickly gives rise to heated and no longer reasoned exchanges, in the same way as politics, religion or ecology. No doubt because many tend to identify too much with Made in France, as if their pride depended on it.
Before you throw blunt objects at me, try to read the entire article with more logic than feelings.
If France still retains exceptional know-how in products such as silk and leather, it is a completely different thing when we are interested in knitted or warp and weft products (= woven materials). It is difficult to find manufacturers who have the level expected by the small creators we regularly talk about on BonneGueule. And when this is the case, three problems come up in the mouths of most of the creators I know:
- 1 - You need crazy minimum quantities to be able to work with the factory in question.
- 2 - When a factory accepts, the small brands clearly fall behind the big ones: deadlines may not be respected, lack of responsiveness, little recourse in the event of a delay or quality problem.
- 3 - The product is always more expensive than in another country in the European Union, for equal quality. This is due to the loss of much know-how in recent decades, where other countries relied more on technological innovation than customs barriers to protect their businesses from competition from emerging countries ( see Italy ).
I won't even dwell on the term " made in France ", as it is so easy to get around. Indeed, many factories in France or Italy can call on foreign subcontractors for manufacturing. But once the order is delivered, the garment comes 100% from the French factory from an accounting point of view. Especially since few people wonder where the cotton comes from and where the made in France sailor top that they buy is woven: do you see a lot of it from the cotton fields and spinning mills in France?
Especially since sweat shops also exist in France. In the Sentier district of Paris where we have our offices, there are still clandestine workshops, and every day I come across foreign workers waiting at the intersection of Rue des Jeuneurs and Rue du Sentier for a little work, paid upon unloading. of truck. Yes, yes, we are in the 2nd arrondissement of the capital.
Check for yourself on Google StreetView,
there are around ten of them at the intersection of rue des Jeunes and the path.
In short, given the opacity and uncertainty that reigns over the traceability of production (even for brands that do not have control upstream, since they go through manufacturers), we might as well focus on what we can see: the quality/price ratio of the clothing . A relationship that is often optimally found in Portugal and Spain for beautiful leather and shoes, in Poland for high-end shirts, and in Italy for quality suits. And too bad for blue-washing .
To end on a more romantic note, France still has serious advantages for local brands: lower transport costs, the same cultural base (we understand each other better), and proximity to factories which makes it possible to quickly launch productions or collection restockings. And the made in France label of course, which succeeds organic or fair trade clothing, but which has less and less marketing impact on customers in France.
As for creation, it is extremely rich in Paris , perhaps even it is the city with the greatest number of interesting young creators.
Clothing made in China: a patriotic choice?
In light of what we have seen, and at a time of a global economy where the slightest pencil contains components from different countries, while being assembled in a 3rd and sold in a 4th, it is It’s hard to know what defines us. Am I Alsatian? French ? European? citizen of the world? Personally I don't really know: probably a mixture of the four.
So what should I prioritize? Buy ultra-local? Make my compatriots work? Bail out Greece? Make Bangladeshis work to improve their living conditions?
What is certain is that it is not my place to tell you what to do . It's up to you to see what's important to you, and then buy accordingly.
As for me, I alternate . If I generally choose the product according to its quality/price ratio (you begin to know a little what we are obsessed with), I also appreciate when I can relate to it culturally, because I am very proud of my French culture ( I talks about art, good food and literature, not necessarily Top Chef and the Angels of Reality TV, eh?
It's a little joy for me to know that a pair of Heschungs is made not far from where I grew up, to find in La Comédie Humaine the references to Balzacian literature that I love, and to discover in small creators of today little-known manufacturing secrets, which were nevertheless engraved in the daily life of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers.
