American Apparel Sells Out; Cashes In
American Apparel, the cotton t-shirt, underwear, and socks company made famous by risqué ads and forward-thinking labor practices, will be sold to Endeavor Acquisition Corp, reportedly for $382.5 million. After the transition to new ownership, American Apparel founder and president Dov Charney, who freely admits to sleeping with employees and hiring girls on the spot in nightclubs, will continue to manage the company's 145 stores.
American Apparel is a rare business success story among a field of still-born garment firms sporting decent labor practices. Other high-minded startups, such as worker-owned cooperative Sweat-X, which drew venture capital from Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, have tried to upset the sweatshop model in recent years, to no avail. Sweat-X, for example, had to close their doors in 2004 after some bad luck and poor marketing, despite rules limiting compensation for managers at eight times the wages of those working the sewing machines. (See an interesting documentary called No Sweat for a comparison of the inner-workings of Sweat-X and American Apparel.)
If you have not been keeping tabs, American Apparel has a mixed social record at best. On the one hand, seamstresses are known to receive massages, low-cost health care plans, and free classes in English, but flamboyant owner Dov Charney has been criticized for hindering employee efforts to unionize and several employees have charged him with sexual harassment.
Indeed, sleazy owner-operator Charney seems to run the company as if it his own Bacchinalian bachelor pad: he personally photographs many of the company's young models in amateur-porn-like settings. He has given a vibrator to at least one female employee, has posted covers from Penthouse magazine on store walls, and famously masturbated while being interviewed by a reporter from Jane magazine. In photo shoots, Charney, not surprisingly, favors a fair share of crotch-shots. The recent sell-out is just the last of many signs that American Apparel is far more about satisfying the whims of its founder than making the garment industry more humane.
Whether one believes that Dov Charney has simply traded one form of the exploitation for another -- substituting his sexual reign for the tyranny of sweatshops -- American Apparel's legacy will be determined by Endeavor Acquisitions, which saw its stock shoot up 22 percent after announcing the buyout.
-- Jen Phillips and Koshlan Mayer-Blackwell
I really hope this does not diminish the quality of clothing American Apparel make. They have a great business, and although they overextend themselves in some marketplaces the clothing is top notch, and I prefer American Apparel clothing over all other brands. I really hope they stay American and stay quality.
American Apparel briefly operated out of a Brattle St. address in Cambridge, MA. It got my attention by displaying giant kiddie-porn posters of teenaged girls in skimpy panties facing a busy pedestrian intersection.
I hope Mr. Charney has enjoyed degrading legions of young girls by his antics. It was certainly his intent to do so. Perhaps he can pool some of his millions from the sale of his business with fellow pimps like Howard Stern and Jerry Springer and build a state-of-the-art bordello in Tel Aviv(shiksas only, of course).
for more on why american apparel is no good: http://www.clamormagazine.org/issues/38/aa/
God, research people, research! First off, American Apparel was not sold. Endevour Aqcuisitions was a "blank check" company set up to take an established business public more quickly then with an IPO. Dov Charney will maintain control of the new company. He is also distributing an average of 500 shares to each employee, worth between 20 and 30 million bucks. The company has not been bought out, it is just going public, and it has no plans to change it's production techniques and labor practices, which are amongst the most decent in the apparel industry, one whit.
As to whether or not Dov Charney gave an employee a vibrator, who [expletive deleted] cares? The company employs thousands of workers in downtown Los Angeles at a wage higher then L.A.'s Living Wage ordinance, with health benefits. BTW, the "vibrators" he gave out were Hitachi Magic Wands, the venerable back massagers that have been best sellers since the early Seventies. In your eyes, this is the moral equivalent of a sweatshop? I expect this kind of sexual hysteria at a Baptist Convention, not in the pages of Mother Jones. I know that sex sells, or more accurately, sexual hysteria sells, but really, let me spell it out for you. Sex, good. Economic exploitation, bad.
Oh and Frank, kiddie porn usually involves, ya know, kiddies. Just because you felt a bit lecherous looking at it doesn't make it kiddie porn. It just makes you a dirty old man.
Talk about making the perfect the enemy of the good.
Hey Spence,
Have you seen any of those shares handed out to any employees yet? I wouldn't jump to AA's defence so quickly. The deal went down in December of 2006 with plans to have it sealed by summer 2007. So that leaves a whole lot of retail workers putting in many hours of overtime over the last 8 months, hoping for a big chunk of cash when the deal goes through. You ever heard of dangling a carrot in front of the rabbit?
Why do you think the stores have been so successful? Sure, the garment workers are being treated fairly at the factory, but you should walk into a retail store and ask about the benefits they've received since they started working (which in most cases would only have been for 3 months since the turnover is so high). Your answer will be "none".
The retail division is the most poorly organized and lowest paid in the whole company. Why do you think Endeavor wants to invest? Surely it's not so they can help concert promoters buy t-shirts in bulk to screen print the logos for the latest up and coming indie bands. They're interested in retail expansion.
Endeavor initially said they wanted to open 800 stores worldwide. I highly doubt that all those hard-working retail stock managers will be getting free lunches, subsidized transportation or afternoon massage breaks anytime soon. And fat chance that AA is going to produce all of those t-shirts from their humble little headquarters in "Downtown LA". The only way they're going to supply 800 retail stores is by outsourcing the labour and paying 15 year old kids minimum wage to push their "super-cool" products.
It's not about good or bad Spence. It's about the money. Do the research.
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