The Tale of the T-Shirt
Tumi Makgetla | Johannesburg, South Africa
The T-shirt tells the story of the South African clothing industry and the struggle to maintain local production against the wave of cheap imports from China.
An imported T-shirt typically sells for R15,90 on the shelves of a well-known South African retail chain targeting the lower-end of the market.
The retail group, which asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive nature of price information, said it marks T-shirts up by 15% to 19% from an original price of around R13.
Assuming that the company paid the almost 40% tariff on clothing products, the product cost about R8 when it entered South Africa.
In contrast, South African-made T shirts sell for between R19 and R29 in the same retail store.
Using this price structure, the lowest a local factory could have supplied the retail company at is R15,40 — nearly twice the landed price of the Chinese garment.
Between 1995 and last year, the value of T-shirts South Africa imported from China soared from R600 000 to R320-million, according to Quantec data.
The domestic economy saw clothing imports grow as the tariff dropped from a 74% average in 1995 to 33,2% in 2004.
More…
Go There
Technorati Tags: Shirt, Shirts, TShirt, TShirts, T-Shirt, T-Shirts, Tee, Teeshirt, Teeshirts, Tshirt, Tshirts, Fashion
