Shopping with conscience

Two tiny TV sets sit side by side in the new American Apparel store on Boston's ritzy shopping strip Newbury Street. On their screens, the company's mustachioed young founder spews forth the ethos behind his brand of cotton T-shirts.

The irreverent and enthusiastic Dov Charney, also the senior partner of the California company, excitedly explains to shoppers that his company does not exploit the workers who make his $15 cotton T-shirts - each affixed with tags bearing the company's trademark, "Sweatshop Free T-Shirts."

With more than 2,000 employees at its 165,000-square foot garment factory in downtown Los Angeles, American Apparel is the largest producer of US-made garments.

Mr. Charney's videotaped monologue is equal parts art installation, economics lesson, and gimmick.

It trumpets the appeal of the youth-oriented clothing chain that has expanded rapidly since opening its first storefront in October 2003. The company's fitted knits now hang in 47 retail outlets - a number that could double this year.

To be sure, no other clothier on Newbury Street - from Giorgio Armani to Gap - is talking about the workers who stitch their knits or about the factories where their garments are made.

But they may do so soon.

"There certainly is a growing consciousness" of the sweatshop issue, says Wendy Liebman, president of WSL Strategic Retail, a marketing research firm that analyzes how people shop.

This growing consumer awareness has struck mainly shoppers who are young, hip, and well-heeled, creating a class of buyers who care about how and where their clothes are made.

The proof is in the sales of several companies, including Charney's, that have made "sweatshop-free" a part of their pitch.

American Apparel recorded $150 million in sales in 2004 and expects to climb to $250 million this year.

In Waltham, Mass., the company No Sweat Apparel claims a 750 percent sales increase since 2003 when sales totalled about $150,000. The "vegetarian" Blackspot sneaker - developed by Kalle Lasn of Adbusters fame - adorns the feet of the clothing-conscious looking for an alternative to Nike. More than 10,000 pairs have sold since 2004.

Even U2's Bono has gotten into the "conscious commerce" apparel game, selling his Edun label at Saks Fifth Avenue.

"I see the sweatshop issue as being a very transcendent issue," says Adam Neiman, co-founder of No Sweat Apparel. "On the one hand we're trying to help unionize the global garment industry, and on the other hand we want consumers here to start asking questions about their own working conditions."

While Charney is an unabashed capitalist who admits the "no sweatshop" tag on his knits is part of a marketing strategy, Mr. Neiman says he's a "lapsed activist" who wants to "change the world a bit - while earning a living."

Far from the American Apparel showroom on Newbury Street that infuses an ambivalent hipster aesthetic with sex appeal, No Sweat Apparel occupies the basement of a nondescript building in a gritty, industrial section of Waltham, a western suburb of Boston. Its khakis, sweatshirts, and shoes are sold mainly over the Internet.

One recent business day, Neiman walked through the stacks of boxes filled with shoes and sweatshirts that have been made by union factories in Indonesia, New York, and Chicago. No Sweat Apparel relies on factories with unionized workforces that either it has inspected or that anti-sweatshop groups have vetted.

"We wanted to create a for-profit business that molds public opinion and creates a new revenue stream," Neiman says.

The issue of global sweatshops and worker conditions captured headlines in the 90s after high-profile allegations were made that products sold by Wal-Mart, Gap, and Nike were manufactured in sweatshops that, in some cases, used child labor.

According to Sweatshop Watch, a California coalition of rights groups that monitors conditions of garment factories, the problem remains widespread because of the vast network of unaccountable subcontractors in China, Bangladesh, the US, and elsewhere who are locked in fierce competition to make clothes at the lowest possible price.

The group defines a sweatshop as any workplace that subjects laborers to long hours and extreme exploitation, maintains unsafe conditions, or uses verbal or physical abuse, or intimidates workers who speak out against conditions.

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