Note, the following is a generalisation and by no means an economic analysis and breakdown of the subject matter. It is simply my observations through the decades and annoyance over being robbed blind for a lifetime. Now, no one can accuse me of being a capitalist. Firstly I dont belive in the dictum of capitalism nor do I support its darwinistic approach as I deeply belive us humans to be above and beyond the notion of Darwin. What else are our brains for? However, I do realise I have lived my whole life in societies in different countries with a mixture of capitalism and socialism with the exception when I lived in the States which is of course the mangled poster child of capitalism. That entails I have had to accept some of the basic facts of capitalism such as the free market, capital flow, work according to market, investments and the rest of the horse manure that capitalism generally is. One thing in particular has irked me more or less my whole life. We are supposed to live in free market societies with the famous competition going on which according to theory is supposed to satisfy both demand and good prices for the population. Thats at least how I was tought it school. My econ teacher would never stop yammering about the importance of free market competition for the benefits of the population, prosperity, growth and so on. Where was I, yee, the thing that has irked me for most of my life. With the free markets and all why are things and especially cloths so expensive and how does it rhyme that no matter what cloth shop you go to, they are all similarly priced, even when it comes to fairly famous brands. Now dont get me wrong. I do understand the value of brands and their tendency to have the customer pay three hundred percent markup for being able to dress in their logo and that there are brands and then there are brands. I once went to a well respected brand store in the US and bought jeans which cost me an arm and a leg but they lasted for almost 8 years so yeah, there are brands, luxury and quality. But getting back at the general clothing store here in Europe, even local to fairly famous brand ones they are all fairly expensive and by expensive I mean the price for a piece of clothing makes a noticable dent in your wallet even if your salary is quite acceptable and within the norms. Ive pondered on this more or less from my teens and always found it strange how such a critical piece of our daily lives is so expensive and yet we have free markets which are supposed to guarantee the best prices and on top we are supposed to have these immense global supply chains which can cut cost and offer volumes previously unheard of. Ive given this a lot of thought, especially when Ive been shopping for cloths and looked at the horrible prices which often dont make any sense when looking at the quality of the pieces. Let me be clear here. I dont shop brands with the exception of Levis and thats cause they used to have a type of jeans which fit my body perfectly. Im am in fact a fervent anti brand person ever since I walked into that store in Paris and was asked to depart with four thousand and five hundred euros for a mediocre looking handbag which didnt even look that well made. But on with the thoughts. First in my thoughts about the pricing of cloths I pondered if it was all about the price of the raw material and there had to be a correlation between price and the quality of raw material but as I got older and dabbled in economy I quickly figured that would not be the case. A roll of quality cotton textil has its price and it goes into a variety of brands which in turn have very different pricing. So no, not raw material, at least not for common clothing. The next thought crossing my mind was the actual work to make the garment. I mean, it doesnt make itself. Someone does have to make the damned thing and that should in theory cost money but the question remained, how much? As it turned out the answer was and is, it generally costs very little to make a garment. Most of cloth related work is offshored to poorer countries where cost of labor is substancially lower, even horribly lower and since there genrally are a lot of people around there is no shortage of labour supply which presses the vages even further down. We have all heard horror stories from the far East, how big and famous brands are employing slave like labor to churn out their products. One that sticks in my mind was the story of the twelve year old boy making Nike shoes for two american cents an hour. Its gross but tells the reality of it, garment work is not a major cost here. So, not the raw material, not the labour cost, what about shipping then? Surely it costs a ton of money shipping garments between continents so thats where my next thought lead me until I was accidentally drawn into a business deal regarding chinese made goods for the european market. It was a very interesting learning period as I learned the shipping cost pr unit from China to Europe amounted to five american cents pr. unit. That was it. The shipping cost was almost nothing and the chinese really knew their stuff as they organised speedy shipping. Their supply chain was enormous. Ok, now we are in a bit of a trouble. Its generally not the raw material, not the labour cost and certainly not shipping so whats left? We have to start looking at the companies themselves and their part in it. Lets start by declaring that the median price for an reasonable quality hoodie in the Eurozone is about seventy euros. Thats roughly what I deduce by looking at some european online shops although there are also many variations in the form of price going up. We call upon a fictional company called Better Clothes and they have this fantastic idea about selling snazzy looking hoodies in Europe. Remember the capitalism we talked about in the beginning? Good cause Better Clothes wants to make tons of money on selling hoodies and their aim is to maximize their profit as much as possible which in theory is an important aspect of capitalism. Lets pretend they have the design part covered and just need to get those hoodies. As most clothing companies they turn their heads to the East and the wast garment complexes there and they happen to strike a deal with a company promising them a hoodie delivered to their store at the price of ten euros. Now of course there are odds and ends when running a company but in general Better Cloths wants to make money fast so they sell their hoodie at eight percent markup which brings us to the median price of a hoodie. Now some of you might say seventy euros isnt a lot of money but lets just stop there and give it a thought. Better Clothes is selling their hoodie with eighty percent markup. That is a lot on top of the inital cost and we might ask ourselves what is the reason behind it. The simple answer is, Better Clothes is greedy. They want to maximise their profit according to capitalistic theorem and as they have some brand reckognition there is enough people out there willing to buy their clothes. And what about if the market is filled up with garment stores exactly like Better Clothes which all sell their clothes at premium markup? Note that we are talking about brand stores here, not clothing shops with third party brands which includes the infamous middle man and the extremely generous markup he places on his wares. What if everybody sort of agree, either as a cartel or simply through the mechanisms of the market and the end result is all stores with similar items are pretty evenly priced? What choices do the consumers have and more to the point, does the markup need to be so high? For one customers dont really have a lot of choice when it comes to clothing stores. While the brands price themselves differently they seem all to agree on that the median price should be as high as the market will bear and since their pricing is more or less similar the customers choice becomes more of an illusion rather than a rock hard fact. I have felt this all over Europe, there is no real choice when buying cloths. The market seems to be pretty evenly split and the populations seem to accept that as the inevitable and buy their garments in a price vs manufacturing ratio which is about as sane as a duck using hammer to swim. In other words, it doesnt make sense at all and Ive felt trapped my whole life in having to make monetary choices for buying a social necessity (we are not allowed to walk around naked) at the mercy of unscrupulous merchants which want to sell me item A at 120 euros in June and the same item at forty euros in october and are still making profit. Something feels inately wrong here and it had come to a point in my life when I flatly refused to be robbed blind during daytime but since there is always need for renewing ones clothes I didnt really have a choice until one day I was introduced to this chinese app which sells cloths online and delivers to the door at the fraction of a price for what local stores have. Naturally I was suspicious in the beginning cause I do understand there has to be a profit somewhere but then I realised this store is so huge, its warehouse backend so large and the companies supplying it are so many and above all, there are so many customers the theorems of capitalism on supply and demand might actually be working. After a long and hard thought I decided to give it a try and ordered some clothes online and as a test I bought four hoodies (I love hoodies). It was very much trial and error. I just picked what seemed to look nice and guessed the size knowing asian sizes can differ from european ones. And then I waited and sure enough, two weeks later my package arrived. Not admitting too much excitment I inspected the hoodies and apart from being synthetic fiber their quality seems to be quite reasonable and most importantly, they all fit quite snuggly. I have a kink wearing cotton clothes to minimize sensory overload but Im ok with synthetics as long as they are soft. I noticed on the app that I just need to mention the word cotton and then it rains with cotton garments so no big deal. However, I immediatly got really angry. Here I had four quite decent hoodies which I had bought for the price of one from a local brand store. In other words, the ratio is four to one and it just makes me furious knowing that Ive been a rat trapped in a concerted effort of some people out there to extract as much money from me with as little effort as possible. Not only does it seem unfair, it feels that somehow the infamous laws of capitalism have completely broken down and I the customer is not in the famous driving seat so much touted by capitalists. In any case, this little experiement was a real eye opener and its not about getting things as cheap as possible, its about a balance in what to expect in a monetary transaction. Am I as a customer getting my monies worth of clothing for a given price or am I simply paying for huge markup and brand marketing which constitue perhaps ninety percent of the total value? Look, this is simple, I want decent cloths to wear and I dont give a damn about a brand image. Just give me something soft and snug and Ill happily wear it. I however am not ready to be robbed blind during daytime and this little experiment with the chinese oneline cloths store did seriously made me revalue what I as a customer should be able to demand from sellers. And while we are at it I want to empathize Im not endorsing the chinese app in any way. It is just puzzling how much price difference there is while still retaining decent quality and it makes one revalue what the choices one has when it comes to buying clothes as well as rethinking the long running myth about justifying high prices of local businesses. One thing is being supportive and buy local but it becomes intolerable when the local businesses are so obviously very busy with extracting as much money as possible and give so little back. Why should local businesses be excempt from the laws of capitalism? Just for a warm fuzzie? Unfortunatly that wont work, its after all just business.