Why in the heavens would Tiger Lee travel to the far side of the world to India? Since the begin of Pirate Fashions, we have tried to make n' buy as much pirate clothing, accessories and weapons from the New World, with 30% of it come right from inside the store itself. So more than half of arrrr products come from overseas either directly from manufactures or from USA distributors that import from overseas. I have always paid my workers only a bid more than min. wages, but if I wish to keep them in the long term, I will need to paid a better wage.
For the past 2 year, I have been trying to find sewing factories in the USA to produce some of the clothing we currently make, but found none that would work. I decided to explore the possible dealing directly with Indian clothing factories, to have them make items that I am already getting from overseas, but with a high quality and in my own designs. Higher quality but at a lower price, how can that be done? By eliminating the middle man distributors. The main issue is high quantity are required, which means big initial orders and carry inventory for a longer period of time. This is how the larger companies such as Museum Replica does it.
It will take 4 or 5 year to move half of our production to India. Half of our productions will still be from the USA. I like to be up front with my customers. I had to travel over to India n'personally visit n' talk to the owners of many different factory to feel comfortable with this option. I found that like anywhere else there are both good and bad business, which is very hard to tell by visiting a website. I have found that Indian company can do a great job copying something. So when they have been giving poorly designed garment, they will do a excellent job of reproducing it, which results in a cheap garment, because the distributor wanted a cheaper price. Since I am going to eliminate the middle man, I can ask for the highest quality garment and it will still be cheaper that what I normally have to paid for a poorly designed garment. It will take about 6 months before we will have any new pirate garb in stock from this trip.
You can follow a day to day travelog of this long and interesting trip on this Tiger Lee's Facebook page starting on April 21. We do all this to get you the best pirate garb in the world, new or old.
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