Typically, yeah - it does mean that if you work long enough in the market you start seeing the repetition, and you can start to see individual design houses beh

Typically, yeah - it does mean that if you work long enough in the market you start seeing the repetition, and you can start to see individual design houses behind selections at brands, but quality is generally unimpeded as it’s a competitive market, and the economies of scale for both cost and quality achievable by an outsourced designer/manufacturer with low labour costs aren’t insignificant. Of course, it’s possible to choose the wrong supplier, or have mismatched expectations - a clothing retailer I worked with sent an entire range to be shredded because it arrived with appalling quality (like, seams that hadn’t even been stitched) and they weren’t prepared to even put it in outlets - which is where a lot of the misfires end up - it isn’t “oh no our factory had a booboo” or “whoops we made too much”, it’s a calculated “X% of the stock we bought last year was crap, therefore we have Y stock to support our outlet presence”. Some brands deliberately foster relationships with lower quality stock shops in order to maintain stock at outlet, but this is generally waning in popularity as retailers have realised that they don’t actually work very well as feeders, and have to stand alone.