Comments on Finotta's review of nau
7 Reviews
3.5 star rating
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Description: Eco-friendly active wear. Nau uses environmentally friendly fabrics whenever possible and purchases renewable energy credits to offset the company's electricity use.
1 star rating
June 18, 2008
Made in China! That is NOT Green!
Nau may have great designs but their clothes are made in China. I wrote to them about this and I got a condescending letter back with the usual corporate blather about how they monitor labor practices, how they can't find people here in the US to make the clothes, ad nauseum.
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Ken O. says:
It's odd that they can't find people here to make the clothes, because American Apparel runs clothing factories in downtown LA. I hear that the US unemployment rate is running quite high lately. You might write to them again.
NAU may be afraid that if they hired locals, they would have to sell their shirts for $150-200 each. Not a mass market. Because when you run the numbers for organic materials and US wages, that probably would be the profitable price for a shirt.
Would it be green to make clothes in China if they were shipped here on sailing ships? Or are you upset about our country's massive trade deficit with the rest of the world?
Josie N. says:
Finotta,
Please accept our apology if our letter came across as condescending, I hope you know that was never our intention. We try to be informative and educate our customers who ask us hard and sensitive questions. I completely understand how it might have come across as "preachy" so to speak, and it's something we're working on. We want to be transparent and help customers understand the decisions we make, and encourage them to keep asking us the hard questions. We welcome any advice you have to offer about how we can do a better job of this because the last thing we want is for someone to feel uncomfortable for asking.
I'd like to invite you to read something in a section on our website we call "Grey Matters", it asnwers the specific question of "Why do you make your clothes in China?". As you might have guessed, a lot of people ask us this question, so we thought it was worthy of posting it on our site:
http://www.nau.com/about-us/grey-matters/global-sourcing.html
Aside from the details in this article, another significant factor contributing to why we manufacture overseas is our size. Nau has only 12 employees and our current spring product line consists of only 43 styles. Our company is just too small to meet minimum's required by most US factories, and by keeping it consolidated into as few factories as possible allows us to be more efficient and meet minimum's required by factories. As we grow, we will most certainly be looking for viable factories here in the USA.
We're doing the best we can, and please don't hesitate to ask us more questions and read more on the subject. It's not a black and white topic, especially when it comes to technical garments.
Thank you,
Josie at Nau