the district

The latest (and possibly largest) entry into the organics blanks field is Anaheim based Alstyle. They just start shipping last week, bringing the t-shirt behemoth’s economy of scales into organics. No word on the quality yet, although the samples are already in the mail. The shirts will be available in 7 colors, although neither of the two sales reps I spoke with for this article had any idea about whether or not environmentally friendly dyes were utilized. To me this is indicative of a greater problem of the major manufacturers entering into the organics market without a fundamental understanding of the concept. While I applaud the increased use of organic cotton, I think that it may be rather disingenuous for a manufacturer to present a product as ‘environmentally friendly’ to consumers without the knowledge to know what that really means. This is additionally problematic for consumers trying to make informed purchasing decisions by being able to differentiate between the green-washed and the “real-deal”. Ordinarily I might argue that these new blanks are a positive step-forward by introducing new customers to organic, but the difficulty comes when $3 organic blanks dyed with harsh chemicals and sewn under less than ideal labor conditions are directly competing with the smaller labels trying to make more of their supply chain “right” (and of course charging higher prices).

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 9:01 pm and is filed under t-shirts, industry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.