Even though the world is falling apart at the economic seams and inflation is officially falling, the unfortunate reality for us is that costs are rising. Both American Apparel and our screen-printer have increased their prices by around 10% this year.

In the two years we’ve been making tees, we’ve always been considerably cheaper than the average high-street tee, both in the UK and in Australia. We’ve also never once increased our prices even though our costs have been steadily increasing.

For example, last year we added inside neck prints which represented a 27% rise in production costs. We chose not to pass this on because the print is a vehicle to deliver the story behind each design, and as such is an integral part of what we’re about as a brand.

Anyway we debated long and hard here at the-affair HQ as to how this affects us, and whether or not to pass on these increases. And of course there are pros and cons either way that are pretty obvious. In the end, it boiled down to the fact that like any other business, our future depends on being profitable today.

So we’ve decided to raise our prices by £2 (8%) on all new shirts bringing them to £27 RRP. All old stock remains at £25 until sold out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 10th, 2009 and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.