Finders Keepers

Look what I found:

To you it may just look like a bunch of shirts, but to me it’s the end result of months of searching and restraining to buy the first long T-shirt I find. I used to get my ‘basic’ long sleeve T’s from Smart Set, and then when they changed the quality I went to a few varied sources, but was not totally convinced. Then I got onto this bandwagon (my sustainability quest) and it seemed almost impossible to not buy ‘cheap fashion’ when it came to basic items. It felt they are just too basic to warrant a higher price point. So when I found these “Made in Canada” with imported Merino Wool, washable, long sleeve T shirts on sale for $9.99 it was almost too good to be true! And then I remembered where I was: Costco.

Now, don’t worry, I’m not going to go into a rant against Costco. I can be the biggest hypocrite when it comes to filling my need to buy in large quantities for what I deem the best price at the time. I understand why it certainly has a hold in the modern consumer. But the bottom line is that it’s a Big Box company! And according to my buying compass, big box companies have ruined small enterprise, correct? The problem with being hard nose on this concept is that big box companies are not going away any time soon (not all of them anyway) and one person boycotting them is like a little ant trying lift an elephant. One thing big box companies are good at is giving the masses what they want. And Costco definitely knows how to do this. I’ve worked with companies that had to fill Costco orders, and believe me they don’t deal in small numbers, but they are very specific about their items. So if Costco is selling Made in Canada, merino wool, washable t-shirts, then, that means there’s a consumer base that expects, needs and wants this type of product.

I know that just because a company is selling one good thing does not always take away from the rest of their product. I think of H&M’s efforts to produce line of clothing with organic fabric –that doesn’t take away their fast fashion practices!  So we have to be careful not to be fooled by their marketing campaigns.

But, and this is a big but, in my opinion if the company is making an effort to provide a product that is sound it’s doing two things:

      1. It is changing what they provide as a status quo and therefore changing the perception and expectations of the consumer. Ie. If the buyer sees that it is possible to get a good quality t-shirt at Costco, made in Canada then they might continue to expect it.

       2.  It is providing the small business that produced the item with a large enough number to continue their operations. And as long as they pay a fair price for this product the manufacturer will be able to continue to produce it. 

So this story ends with me keeping my T-shirts and hoping that more Big Box companies start to make small, even tiniest minuscule changes to help the little people. –Hey, one can dream!