9 ms·

“Why buy a $40 bikini made in America when you can buy a $4 bikini directly from China? For that matter, why buy a $20 bikini made in China but imported by a U.

“Why buy a $40 bikini made in America when you can buy a $4 bikini directly from China? For that matter, why buy a $20 bikini made in China but imported by a U.S. company like the Gap when you can buy a $4 bikini directly from China?” – Alana Semuels, The Atlantic ^ 40% of merchants are in China but the percentage of goods made in China is likely much higher maybe like 75%.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Yes! It’s simple price compression. If you can outsource labor to China, why can you not buy direct from China?
- baybal2 7y ago
  > why can you not buy direct from China? Before somebody can buy something directly from China, the person have to know what they can buy... You know, entire business empires were built entirely on knowing what and where to buy.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Quality assurance is one thing: many companies that outsource to China have very strict QA setup to prevent being scammed by vendors. Also, while the manufacturing might happen in China, the IP is often not. That bikini’s nice design and the way the material is put together might be more valuable than the assembly. You might think you are getting the real deal, but it turns out it’s just a cheap copy.
  - toomuchtodo 7y ago
    How is this different than cheap, low quality material already sold at Walmart and similar establishments (or even Amazon marketplace) at a first world markup? You can have a lot of garbage come from Aliexpress and still come out ahead.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      Everything is fine if you expect garbage. If you don’t expect garbage, you will be disappointed.
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Walmart does do quality control. I'm not sure how much, but at the very least if your project has too many returns they won't let you sell anymore.
    - fouc 7y ago
      Actually Walmart's material isn't nearly as low quality you might think. When I'm in Asia, I struggle to find equivalent clothing/shoes for as cheap as Walmart. Walmart's purchasing power ensures the lowest prices for America, it's actually more expensive in Asia.
      - baybal2 7y ago
        Haha, yes. In China, ironically, Walmart became a kind of an upscale establishment.
        seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        I wouldn’t go that far. Maybe more upscale than WuMart, but not as upscale as even carrefour.
        code_duck 7y ago
        Maybe the equivalent of target in the US?
        CharlesColeman 7y ago
        > Haha, yes. In China, ironically, Walmart became a kind of an upscale establishment. It's interesting to see how brands are positioned differently in different markets. IIRC, Stella Artois is the PBR of the UK, but without the hipster cool, while it's relatively premium in the US.
      - 7y ago
  - duxup 7y ago
    Yeah i'd much rather buy form a western brand or someone I know is doing QA, even if it is made in China, rather than an ultra generic item from China.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      I'd rather buy a thing from a local company even though I recognize that same product from Aliexpress for the simple reason: if there's something wrong, it's easier to deal with locals. If there's something very wrong, it's easier to sue the locals. That's about the extent to which I trust small retailers. I don't trust their QA, not a little bit.
    - luckylion 7y ago
      The chinese companies will usually bend over backwards to satisfy you, though. They will happily ship you another product if yours shouldn't have passed QA, or refund you, or both. They know how important reviews are and act accordingly.
  - amelius 7y ago
    Why don't the Chinese simply add QA to the process if this increases the profit? Surely it can't be the most difficult or expensive part of the production process ... Also, there are only so many ways you can put a bikini together. The Chinese should have learned this by now. Or they can simply hire an Italian fashion student for a small price.
    - j-c-hewitt 7y ago
      Because retailers do the evaluation for you. We just bought a bunch of scissors and snippers. One of them sells well and some of them look OK and might wind up selling. One packet from a factory came with each product individually wrapped in aluminum foil like a child did it (and probably did) and each product was still coated in a sheen of gross machine grease. That was the worst out of a round of Alibaba buying of maybe 20 SKUs. There's also a big world out there and the discount that comes from buying products of poor quality is more appealing than the quality itself. There are, in fact, many ways to make a bikini.
    - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
      Lots of Chinese go to Italy to grab clothes that are taken back to be cloned. You don’t just do a design, you want to copy designs that are successful and already heavily marketed. As for QA, if they aren’t trying to build a brand with repeat buyers, QA is simply overhead. Even if they are, they might not have the foresight or management experience to implement QA correctly. The lack of merit-based management talent is a huge problem.
    - jcranmer 7y ago
      Because the Chinese companies don't have the brand recognition. Most consumers would see a Chinese name and think "low-quality knock-off" and unable to distinguish a Chinese company trying to compete on quality versus one competing on price.
      - petra 7y ago
        But some Chinese companies do have QA, brand recognition, and low prices. Like Xiaomi. Or Anker. And it's working well for them. But why doesn't it exist in many product categories ? Why it's so hard to find a list of similar Chinese brands for different product categories ?
  - HillaryBriss 7y ago
    > many companies that outsource to China have very strict QA I do not doubt this for a second. OTOH, recently we've even seen quality on Apple's Mac products deteriorate noticeably. Assuming Apple is extremely good at this strict QA, I wonder if some sort of China manufacturing sea-change has occurred.
    - quicklyfrozen 7y ago
      Has Apple's assembly quality declined? Feels more like design issues to me (e.g. keyboard, flexgate, overheating).
      - HillaryBriss 7y ago
        maybe that's a better question to ask. IDK. Apple's recent quality problems may involve problematic design more than fabrication/assembly/manufacturing. could be, I guess.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  My girlfriend bought a dress off Amazon that was shipped direct from a Chinese vendor. It took a week to get there even though it was advertised as Prime. And she had to pay the $70.00 to ship it back when she returned it. And when it arrived at the address on the seller's pre-supplied shipping label, it then bounced and spent 2 months slowly making its way back to her because the seller was no longer at that location.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    And thats when you use a heavy hand with scammyzon. First, you proclaim loudly the minute PRIME failed. Second, you reject the shipment on that you needed it within that time quote. Third, you initiate "did not receive". Fourth if Scammyzon balks, chargeback.
xrd 7y ago
So fascinating that American companies, in their race to generate profits, jettisoned their connection to American labor and created this situation, where the Chinese manufacturers could remove those companies as the middleman.
- themodelplumber 7y ago
  I have some Chinese friends who work in QA for an American company (visiting factories and such) and who do an amazing job, and I wish more American shoppers knew about this. These are really good people who care about high-quality goods. They are well-educated native-speakers and they can spot cut corners a mile away. When you buy a $4 bikini you are taking a quality-related risk though, and a lot of the time, shoppers are correctly aiming for quantity, not quality. Personally, if I buy a $4 anything direct from China I know I'm taking that quality risk, but it's prospective risk: Periodically I want to broaden my horizons and check to see whether I'm being gouged or not, or just see if I can let my buddies know about something that is worth it at a surprisingly low cost. Given a product category that's been around for a while, that's important if you'll be buying a lot of stuff in that category. I do this sometimes with simple electronic components, antennas, things like that. However in most cases the original/heavy-QA item is obviously way better, and in the case of electronics, maybe it's made in the _exact_ same factory, but the firmware, materials, and overall quality is simply worlds ahead of the afterthought/low-QA product. Yaesu released the FT-4X and FT-65 radios which are a great example of this, made in the same factory but far superior to the Chinese-brand radios (I own both and use them frequently). Nagoya and Comet and Diamond antennas "can" be cheaply replicated but surprisingly given such simple parameters, the result is periodically complete junk. But much of the time, it's not complete junk. It's in the middle somewhere. So the question becomes: Would I like "good enough" and _three of them_ (like three antennas for several radios), or "best on the market" and one of them. I personally find that I have some "best of market" needs like participating in a local emergency exercise, and in other cases maybe I just enjoy a low-key hobby and having access to just-OK equipment means I can string multiple devices together and have some broad-minded fun as opposed to the deeper, quality-focused type. IMO it's good for consumers to know about both mindsets, and yet I think many more do get this than the HN crowd will credit. American companies were also warned of this shift long ago and a lot of them sure seem to be doing OK maintaining their competitive advantage. We are now in the information age and America is a cultural-informational dominator.
code_duck 7y ago
I can answer that. It’s because when you order a four dollar bikini from China, it’s generally not the same product as one would order for $40 in the US. Merchants and wholesalers in the US have done diligence and quality assessments on their suppliers. You have no such luxury ordering from a seller on Amazon. Your only way of assessing quality is reviews and photographs, and then, the seller has essentially no liability or accountability. There are many tiers of quality for products in China, and almost always when you order a cheap one online, it is lower quality than the product you can buy for 5 to 10 times as much at a US retail store. I’ve done small-scale importing from China for a retail business. The quality of the product you receive is generally related to whether the seller is concerned with repeat business in the future.
- Moto7451 7y ago
  I used to work in a company importing textiles and fitness equipment, so I see and do agree with your point of view. While this is true, I’d wager it doesn’t matter for a large number of consumers and their buying habits. A lot of “durable goods” are really just consumables we collectively lie to ourselves about. That bikini may be used on one trip and a new one desired for the next. Is it actually worth spending a lot of money on that article of clothing? Does the increase in quality matter if it only needs to last a few days? I do the same with ties. If I need a specific color for a wedding party and I never plan on wearing it again, to China/Amazon I go. A single tie from my much smaller “I’m definitely going to wear this repeatedly” collection costs more than the ten others I’ve purchased from Amazon. The cheap Amazon ones are practically falling apart after two parties, but it doesn’t matter because that second party wasn’t part of the plan. My upside is saving a few hundred dollars on ties I won’t wear.
- sytelus 7y ago
  You are saying middleman doing quality control deserves 400% markup. I can easily imagine middleman who adds 25% markup to find $8 high quality bikini for total cost of $10 to consumer instead of $40 to consumer. The core problem is rather huge currency imbalance. Anything done in US, including quality assurance, is hugely expensive. The Gap has to pay massive executive and retail employee salaries in dollars and have stores with rent in dollars. The currency imbalance benefits merchants on one side and consumers on other side.
Bayart 7y ago
There's made in China and made in China after strict specifications. Completely different kettle of fish. See companies like Suitsupply, for example. This being said there's a movement back to locally made in the US and Europe in the mid/upper range. The customer "connoisseurship" culture eventually made people more aware of things like fabrication quality, its relation to price and the trappings of branding.

toomuchtodo 7y ago

Yes! It’s simple price compression. If you can outsource labor to China, why can you not buy direct from China?

baybal2 7y ago
> why can you not buy direct from China? Before somebody can buy something directly from China, the person have to know what they can buy... You know, entire business empires were built entirely on knowing what and where to buy.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
seanmcdirmid 7y ago
Quality assurance is one thing: many companies that outsource to China have very strict QA setup to prevent being scammed by vendors. Also, while the manufacturing might happen in China, the IP is often not. That bikini’s nice design and the way the material is put together might be more valuable than the assembly. You might think you are getting the real deal, but it turns out it’s just a cheap copy.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  How is this different than cheap, low quality material already sold at Walmart and similar establishments (or even Amazon marketplace) at a first world markup? You can have a lot of garbage come from Aliexpress and still come out ahead.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Everything is fine if you expect garbage. If you don’t expect garbage, you will be disappointed.
  - bluGill 7y ago
    Walmart does do quality control. I'm not sure how much, but at the very least if your project has too many returns they won't let you sell anymore.
  - fouc 7y ago
    Actually Walmart's material isn't nearly as low quality you might think. When I'm in Asia, I struggle to find equivalent clothing/shoes for as cheap as Walmart. Walmart's purchasing power ensures the lowest prices for America, it's actually more expensive in Asia.
    - baybal2 7y ago
      Haha, yes. In China, ironically, Walmart became a kind of an upscale establishment.
      - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
        I wouldn’t go that far. Maybe more upscale than WuMart, but not as upscale as even carrefour.
      - code_duck 7y ago
        Maybe the equivalent of target in the US?
      - CharlesColeman 7y ago
        > Haha, yes. In China, ironically, Walmart became a kind of an upscale establishment. It's interesting to see how brands are positioned differently in different markets. IIRC, Stella Artois is the PBR of the UK, but without the hipster cool, while it's relatively premium in the US.
    - 7y ago
- duxup 7y ago
  Yeah i'd much rather buy form a western brand or someone I know is doing QA, even if it is made in China, rather than an ultra generic item from China.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I'd rather buy a thing from a local company even though I recognize that same product from Aliexpress for the simple reason: if there's something wrong, it's easier to deal with locals. If there's something very wrong, it's easier to sue the locals. That's about the extent to which I trust small retailers. I don't trust their QA, not a little bit.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    The chinese companies will usually bend over backwards to satisfy you, though. They will happily ship you another product if yours shouldn't have passed QA, or refund you, or both. They know how important reviews are and act accordingly.
- amelius 7y ago
  Why don't the Chinese simply add QA to the process if this increases the profit? Surely it can't be the most difficult or expensive part of the production process ... Also, there are only so many ways you can put a bikini together. The Chinese should have learned this by now. Or they can simply hire an Italian fashion student for a small price.
  - j-c-hewitt 7y ago
    Because retailers do the evaluation for you. We just bought a bunch of scissors and snippers. One of them sells well and some of them look OK and might wind up selling. One packet from a factory came with each product individually wrapped in aluminum foil like a child did it (and probably did) and each product was still coated in a sheen of gross machine grease. That was the worst out of a round of Alibaba buying of maybe 20 SKUs. There's also a big world out there and the discount that comes from buying products of poor quality is more appealing than the quality itself. There are, in fact, many ways to make a bikini.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Lots of Chinese go to Italy to grab clothes that are taken back to be cloned. You don’t just do a design, you want to copy designs that are successful and already heavily marketed. As for QA, if they aren’t trying to build a brand with repeat buyers, QA is simply overhead. Even if they are, they might not have the foresight or management experience to implement QA correctly. The lack of merit-based management talent is a huge problem.
  - jcranmer 7y ago
    Because the Chinese companies don't have the brand recognition. Most consumers would see a Chinese name and think "low-quality knock-off" and unable to distinguish a Chinese company trying to compete on quality versus one competing on price.
    - petra 7y ago
      But some Chinese companies do have QA, brand recognition, and low prices. Like Xiaomi. Or Anker. And it's working well for them. But why doesn't it exist in many product categories ? Why it's so hard to find a list of similar Chinese brands for different product categories ?
- HillaryBriss 7y ago
  > many companies that outsource to China have very strict QA I do not doubt this for a second. OTOH, recently we've even seen quality on Apple's Mac products deteriorate noticeably. Assuming Apple is extremely good at this strict QA, I wonder if some sort of China manufacturing sea-change has occurred.
  - quicklyfrozen 7y ago
    Has Apple's assembly quality declined? Feels more like design issues to me (e.g. keyboard, flexgate, overheating).
    - HillaryBriss 7y ago
      maybe that's a better question to ask. IDK. Apple's recent quality problems may involve problematic design more than fabrication/assembly/manufacturing. could be, I guess.
jschwartzi 7y ago
My girlfriend bought a dress off Amazon that was shipped direct from a Chinese vendor. It took a week to get there even though it was advertised as Prime. And she had to pay the $70.00 to ship it back when she returned it. And when it arrived at the address on the seller's pre-supplied shipping label, it then bounced and spent 2 months slowly making its way back to her because the seller was no longer at that location.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  And thats when you use a heavy hand with scammyzon. First, you proclaim loudly the minute PRIME failed. Second, you reject the shipment on that you needed it within that time quote. Third, you initiate "did not receive". Fourth if Scammyzon balks, chargeback.

xrd 7y ago

So fascinating that American companies, in their race to generate profits, jettisoned their connection to American labor and created this situation, where the Chinese manufacturers could remove those companies as the middleman.

themodelplumber 7y ago
I have some Chinese friends who work in QA for an American company (visiting factories and such) and who do an amazing job, and I wish more American shoppers knew about this. These are really good people who care about high-quality goods. They are well-educated native-speakers and they can spot cut corners a mile away. When you buy a $4 bikini you are taking a quality-related risk though, and a lot of the time, shoppers are correctly aiming for quantity, not quality. Personally, if I buy a $4 anything direct from China I know I'm taking that quality risk, but it's prospective risk: Periodically I want to broaden my horizons and check to see whether I'm being gouged or not, or just see if I can let my buddies know about something that is worth it at a surprisingly low cost. Given a product category that's been around for a while, that's important if you'll be buying a lot of stuff in that category. I do this sometimes with simple electronic components, antennas, things like that. However in most cases the original/heavy-QA item is obviously way better, and in the case of electronics, maybe it's made in the _exact_ same factory, but the firmware, materials, and overall quality is simply worlds ahead of the afterthought/low-QA product. Yaesu released the FT-4X and FT-65 radios which are a great example of this, made in the same factory but far superior to the Chinese-brand radios (I own both and use them frequently). Nagoya and Comet and Diamond antennas "can" be cheaply replicated but surprisingly given such simple parameters, the result is periodically complete junk. But much of the time, it's not complete junk. It's in the middle somewhere. So the question becomes: Would I like "good enough" and _three of them_ (like three antennas for several radios), or "best on the market" and one of them. I personally find that I have some "best of market" needs like participating in a local emergency exercise, and in other cases maybe I just enjoy a low-key hobby and having access to just-OK equipment means I can string multiple devices together and have some broad-minded fun as opposed to the deeper, quality-focused type. IMO it's good for consumers to know about both mindsets, and yet I think many more do get this than the HN crowd will credit. American companies were also warned of this shift long ago and a lot of them sure seem to be doing OK maintaining their competitive advantage. We are now in the information age and America is a cultural-informational dominator.

code_duck 7y ago

I can answer that. It’s because when you order a four dollar bikini from China, it’s generally not the same product as one would order for $40 in the US. Merchants and wholesalers in the US have done diligence and quality assessments on their suppliers. You have no such luxury ordering from a seller on Amazon. Your only way of assessing quality is reviews and photographs, and then, the seller has essentially no liability or accountability. There are many tiers of quality for products in China, and almost always when you order a cheap one online, it is lower quality than the product you can buy for 5 to 10 times as much at a US retail store. I’ve done small-scale importing from China for a retail business. The quality of the product you receive is generally related to whether the seller is concerned with repeat business in the future.

Moto7451 7y ago
I used to work in a company importing textiles and fitness equipment, so I see and do agree with your point of view. While this is true, I’d wager it doesn’t matter for a large number of consumers and their buying habits. A lot of “durable goods” are really just consumables we collectively lie to ourselves about. That bikini may be used on one trip and a new one desired for the next. Is it actually worth spending a lot of money on that article of clothing? Does the increase in quality matter if it only needs to last a few days? I do the same with ties. If I need a specific color for a wedding party and I never plan on wearing it again, to China/Amazon I go. A single tie from my much smaller “I’m definitely going to wear this repeatedly” collection costs more than the ten others I’ve purchased from Amazon. The cheap Amazon ones are practically falling apart after two parties, but it doesn’t matter because that second party wasn’t part of the plan. My upside is saving a few hundred dollars on ties I won’t wear.
sytelus 7y ago
You are saying middleman doing quality control deserves 400% markup. I can easily imagine middleman who adds 25% markup to find $8 high quality bikini for total cost of $10 to consumer instead of $40 to consumer. The core problem is rather huge currency imbalance. Anything done in US, including quality assurance, is hugely expensive. The Gap has to pay massive executive and retail employee salaries in dollars and have stores with rent in dollars. The currency imbalance benefits merchants on one side and consumers on other side.

Bayart 7y ago

There's made in China and made in China after strict specifications. Completely different kettle of fish. See companies like Suitsupply, for example. This being said there's a movement back to locally made in the US and Europe in the mid/upper range. The customer "connoisseurship" culture eventually made people more aware of things like fabrication quality, its relation to price and the trappings of branding.