Surprise Sale for Progressive Clothing Maker
American Apparel's controversial founder has sold the clothing company to an investment firm for $382.5 million. The company made a name for itself by manufacturing guilt-free clothes in downtown Los Angeles, where it pays workers double the minimum wage and offers them healthcare, free meals and English lessons.
American Apparel’s controversial founder has sold the clothing company to an investment firm for $382.5 million. The company made a name for itself by manufacturing guilt-free clothes in downtown Los Angeles, where it pays workers double the minimum wage and offers them healthcare, free meals and English lessons.
Dig, Root, GrowNew York Times:
At the heart of American Apparel are two threads: a high-minded business model that requires clothes to be made in the United States at double the minimum wage, and a retro-chic that glamorizes the T-shirt-and-jeans simplicity of the 1970s and ’80s.
All of the clothing sold at the chain is manufactured at a factory in downtown Los Angeles, rather than in Asia, where the vast majority of its competitors’ goods are churned out. American Apparel provides its employees with subsidized health care and meals and with free English classes.
The company’s progressive message has won over thousands of young urbanites — Mr. Charney refers to them as “Young Metropolitan Adults” — who flock to the chain for bright-colored T-shirts, leggings and underwear. American Apparel is expected to sell $275 million worth of them in 2006.
But as American Apparel has expanded, its founder, Mr. Charney, has been dogged by accusations of sexual harassment and a bizarre management style that could make it harder for him to operate within the traditional boundaries of a publicly traded company.
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Somewhere over the course of this utterly peculiar political year, there have been glimmers of a sea change in American sexual politics.
There was a time, around a decade ago, when American Apparel's brand seemed to be enhanced, at least on the business side, by the pervy sensibility of its founder and charismatic leader, Dov Charney. Those days have apparently passed.
With public figures such as actress Cameron Diaz standing up for pubic hair, and American Apparel adding tufts beneath its mannequins' underwear, scholar and Guardian writer Emer O'Toole proclaims this will be "the year of the bush."
Troubled clothing maker American Apparel -- its racy ads and its CEO under fire -- has announced that it may be forced to file for bankruptcy.
American Apparel, the paradoxical clothing firm that weaves together good labor practices with ridiculous acts of misogyny, is hanging by the proverbial economic thread as its stock plunges to an all-time low and industry experts begin to seriously doubt the company's future.
We've always been a little skeeved out by the American Apparel phenomenon, what with the eco-conscious, "sweatshop free," hipster-friendly company's glaring omission of any sense of enlightened politics when it comes to (continued).
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