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Sean

The Idle Thumbs Store

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Yeah we are in the process of moving away from them, but its not an instant thing as not everyone carries all shirt types in all colors. (especially not comfortable non shitty ones)

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Also I don't really know what the morally-perfect wholesale clothing manufacturer is. If someone knows, please pass it along. I don't inherently give a shit about American Apparel any more than any other company, but they manufacture locally, seem to treat their workers well based on what I've read, and produce shirts that compared favorably to the other samples we examined when we were sourcing materials. I feel like the chances of finding any company that operates at any kind of scale and has nothing about it that someone might find objectionable is a bit of a fantasy. The irony is that if we used some no-name shirt manufacturer that treats foreign sweatshop workers like shit and pays them next to nothing, nobody would bat an eye because they wouldn't have heard of the company's name in the first place. Alternative suggestions are welcome but contextless emoticons are worthless and will achieve nothing. Legitimate suggestions will be researched in good faith.

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For what it's worth, one socially exploitative aspect of AA's business that they seem to be actively trying to roll back is personally fully outweighed by local manufacture, fair treatment of employees, good quality of materials, generally comfortable clothes, etc. I think you should keep using them unless there really is some "perfect" alternative in play. 

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I love American Apparel!  And the only reason I didn't love American Apparel is gone!  And I am an extra-small male and no one else will clothe me!

 

But I wear no t-shirts except as undershirts so I'm not really the Idle Thumbs Store demographic.

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Yeah, I've heard a few times about that Charney guy being a creep, and their advertising is repeatedly sleazy (they got into trouble with the Advertising Standards Agency in the UK, who basically told them "don't do it again", which they pretty much did anyway), but I also feel that that's just more visible and unusual than the way in which most clothes manufacturers are reprehensible, and like Jon said, there seem to be some moves to reel some of that stuff back in (although quite how much remains to be seen; at least Charney's gone). I don't have a strong opinion on whether they can be described as "ethical", but obviously the choice of whether or not to use them has to take place in the context of the landscape in which they exist, which is generally pretty shitty in one way or another, from my limited knowledge.

(Complete tangent that need not be explored at all: Is sourcing locally always ethically better? Ignoring the environmental impact of transporting things worldwide, simply refusing to do business with countries with a reputation for slave labour doesn't necessarily leave their inhabitants in any better a situation. Ideally we should be choosing to pay more for goods from those places so that those people can work under better conditions. I'm not sure how to make that feasible, though. Also I'm a complete idiot when it comes to economics so that's probably all wrong.)

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As a larger gentleman, I have to say my AA XL Thumbs' shirt is a lovely fit. I'm sat in it right now, smiling.

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Contextless emoticons are worthless and will achieve nothing.

Jeez. Well, I guess it sparked an interesting discussion about clothing manufacturers :/

 

My emoticon was triggered by being grossed out at the brand, and how they market themselves, (and I apologize for not providing context, incorrectly assuming everyone knew about the (allegedly?) horrible CEO and their awful misogynistic marketing) but I agree that the actual ethical issues with lesser-known brands are probably bigger in the end.

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Jeez. Well, I guess it sparked an interesting discussion about clothing manufacturers :/

 

My emoticon was triggered by being grossed out at the brand, and how they market themselves, (and I apologize for not providing context, incorrectly assuming everyone knew about the (allegedly?) horrible CEO and their awful misogynistic marketing) but I agree that the actual ethical issues with lesser-known brands are probably bigger in the end.

Sorry, I was in an already-annoyed state about constant passive-aggressive holier-than-thou moral policing on the internet due to unrelated events and I reacted too strongly in this case.

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FWIW, I was just linking to information for people who weren't aware of anything regarding AA.  The ethical and moral quandaries of clothing production are as wide as they are deep.  If you're interested in ethical suppliers, I would suspect that AA is in many ways one of the best options, shenanigans of the former CEO notwithstanding.  If your customers are satisfied, my opinion is that you don't necessarily need to change brands unless you desire to.

 

Of course AA is going through a pretty significant change now, revisiting how they act as a company in another year will probably be much more informative. 

 

Also, the style of the marketing bugged me less than the requisite beautiful homogeny of it.  One part of me has rather respected them for being practically a satire of the way that almost every company uses sexy women to sell shit.  AA just said fuck it, let's just not even pretend that we're not doing that. But, on the other hand, gross continuation of the objectification of women. 

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Besides finding out about that sex slave business afterwards, I didn't mean it was bad American Apparel advertised in such a NSFW fashion. Just somehow Idlethumbs became much more sexy than I had imagined. Sexy thumbs.

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Spent three hours in a helicopter doing some vaguely gut wrenching moves and puked all over my Thumbs shirt - it's still super good.

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(a logo set on a midnight blue, 100% ring-spun cotton hanging cooly off of my body)

 

"Coolly." Unless you meant "coolie," in which case there's a problem of an entirely different nature.

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I don't know if this is exactly Thumbs merch business, but I just thought to note that the Olly Moss "Social Justice Warrior" design would make a great shirt, and it would be fine if any margin on that went to the creator/the podcast/a donation to RAINN or similar rather than Teespring or Cafepress...

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I don't know if this is exactly Thumbs merch business, but I just thought to note that the Olly Moss "Social Justice Warrior" design would make a great shirt, and it would be fine if any margin on that went to the creator/the podcast/a donation to RAINN or similar rather than Teespring or Cafepress...

We talked it over and decided we didn't want to merchandise this, even if all profits were donated (which they would be, obviously). Olly just put the design up so anyone can print their own if they want.

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In terms of shirt suppliers, it's something I spend a lot of my free time on because I don't really have or maintain regular person hobbies.

 

We started with and may return to American Apparel in that the quality is reliable and there are the lesser of the evils, I've found.  The fact of the matter is that we are talking about a ubiquitous soft good that, no matter what, is somewhere in the world being made by a slave for free.  In an ideal world I wouldn't have to make the choice between sexually explicit, exploitative marketing and slavery.  If I have to make the choice, I think I have to not choose slavery.  

 

The other thing that's really difficult in sourcing t-shirts is available quantity. The latest Wizard t-shirt is on Alternative Apparel, which is more expensive for us than AA (which is already pricey and we won't change the price of a T until we're actually LOSING money on each one sold), made in America and has a relatively wholesome ad campaign. My friend Paige and her boyfriend were actually models for them for a while via their band and said they were decent people.  The issue with Alternative Apparel is that their stock is almost always zero and we got incredibly lucky sourcing the midnight navy shirts for the Wizard in the quantities we needed (although they don't make anything over 2XL) and even then we had to compromise on the color (because we wanted something more purple but not ACTUALLY grape-koolaid purple).

 

So between human rights, feminist morals, quantity and sizing (something I left out but other than American, which goes to 3XL, I think, you have to go to the 3rd world on cotton that was DEFINITELY obtained by someone in shitty working conditions, for anything over 2X) and COLORS it's actually a hard problem. FURTHERMORE, we want them to fit well, take screen printing ink well and, if you've ordered one from us, be tagless.  PS: we pay a guy in SF SEVENTY FIVE CENTS A SHIRT to de-tag them because AA and Alternative won't sell us shirts w/o tags).

 

For a break down of our shirts/sources there is:

 

Gold Foil Wizard from Kickstarter: American Apparel Tri-Blend

The Original (both KS and current stock): American Apparel 50/50

Idle Vice: American Apparel Organic 100% Cotton

The Wizard: Alternative Apparel basic t

 

We're looking into a brand called Next Level for the next round of Campo Shirts but I'm having a hard time figuring out where they are made, which makes me uneasy. We'll see how they turn out.

 

I'm probably going to just have to go LA fashion mart/week sometime in the future and do a deep dive on our options but right now we don't have an ideal shirt source, so if for some reason you or someone you know is hyper knowledgeable about this, I'd appreciate it!

 

OH! Anything over 2X isn't sourced by us, and instead by the screen-printer (Babylon Burning in SF). I'm usually so nuts that by the time I hear we can't get our 5-10 larger units I say "Fuck it, just find something that's close in color, I don't care where it's made or by who," which always leaves me feeling not great.

 

There you go!

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I don't know if this has been answered elsewhere, but I haven't seen it -- will there be another run of the Idle Vice t-shirts, specifically the M Medium? 

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Thanks for that, Sean. I definitely brought my smiley into this without having thought things through, and now realize that – of course! – you already knew about the issues with American Apparel, but that there are issues with all suppliers (of which gross advertisements is just one!) and that it's not just a matter of sending a PNG to some t-shirt guy.

 

Thanks for the detailed rundown, and for being conscientious about your merchandise.

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I do appreciate how thoughtfully you guys approach everything, and for being open about discussing this stuff with your community. 

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Yeah, the openness and careful consideration are definitely appreciated.

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I feel like I need to buy a shirt now just because of that amazing and in depth post that should have been really boring but was super engaging from one sentence to the next. How even is this?

 

But I still look terrible in T-Shirts. All of the Kickstarter shirt rewards I have gotten just go to my wife.

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YOU'LL NEVER BELIEVE THIS PRODUCT EXISTS!

 

I got a pedicure with my wife-unit to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary recently.

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Which led to a photo shoot starring the latest Idle Thumbs' nail polish, Idle Vice. I cannot wait to buy 14 cases of this stuff.

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EXTRA: Contortions were attempted.

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