The demand for affordable clothing is very high, and the price of raw material continues to increase. Other costs include paying designers and the staff at the clothing brand, marketing agencies, digital sponsored advertising, sourcing agents, shipping costs, the overhead of a retail store and more. And everyone gets paid well except for the factory workers that actually make the garments. Because paying factory workers extremely low wages significantly lowers the end cost for the consumer.

Different countries have vastly different labor laws and the cost of a good or service varies based on the economic needs of each country. Most countries that have strong manufacturing capabilities lack strong economies. This makes the workforce easy to exploit and gives leverage to the brands offering them work. So, most brands get multiple quotes and give the work to the lowest bidder. This process rarely includes checking the working conditions or compensation rates. Child labor, unlivable wages and dangerous working conditions are common ways to lower costs.

Our process involves cutting in areas other than workers’ wages. This is possible because Metropolitan is a factory owned brand, selling directly to you, the end consumer, and retailers. Below are the areas we build efficiencies which allows more value for the workers:

• Streamlining Sourcing - There are many stages to apparel production. There are raw materials made into yarn, yarn knit or woven to fabric, fabric cut and sewn to garments, garments dyed and decorated, finished garments tagged and bagged. And each one of these steps can happen in a different place with a different set of middlemen and mark ups. We streamline that process by handling the entire process in-house.

• Cutting Waste - Most brands produce large volumes of clothing to meet cost efficiencies and then try to sell everything that was produced. This leads to garments ending up in discount retailers and landfills. Both erode profit margin and the ability to pay workers because discounters pay close to or less what it costs to make the garment, and landfills do not pay at all.

• We only produce for the demand that is created. This keeps margins high, which allows us to share profits with our factory team and minimizes environmental damage.

While our goal is betterment, it must be a way of doing business, not just a campaign. So we promise to deliver premium products at affordable prices, and we are asking you to turn away from fast fashion and look to our artisans for garments you can feel good about. This slight shift in behavior can have an immense impact on the community in Honduras and prove to be a blueprint of how to reimagine a broken industry.

Better treatment, better quality, better environment, better feeling. Which will make the world just a little bit better.

MADE FOR GOOD.