CafePress Deflects Questions about its New Garments

While jclifford wrote yesterday with due praise for CafePress’ decision to expand its color choices for its ethically-made American Apparel tank tops, there is another piece of news coming out that concerns me. In the second week of next month, CafePress intends to discontinue its “Baby Doll” style shirt, manufactured by American Apparel. In its place CafePress will offer something called a “Junior Jersey Tee,” and has also begun offering a Maternity Shirt. Neither of these are made by American Apparel. Instead, in correspondence CafePress identified these as belonging to a new “CafePress Exclusive Label.”

Where do these “CafePress Exclusive Label” shirts come from? Cindy Clarke, Director of Merchandise for CafePress, indicated the following:

We source products from a number of different suppliers and consider this information proprietary.

In other words, “we’re not telling you.”

I have a memory. In the 1990s, Nike tried to hide the identity of its producers, and it had its reasons. When that information was finally winkled out, we learned that the producers of Nike shoes in foreign countries such as Indonesia, China and Vietnam were paying ultra-low wages and treating their workers like dogs. How else do you get such great, great shoes at such low, low prices? Something, or rather someone, has got to give. Once this information was made public, Nike had to go through the really inconvenient process of fibbing, flailing, and finally making some pesky concessions to human rights.

I’m not saying that CafePress is having its new Junior Jersey Tee Shirt or its new Maternity Shirt made in a Sweatshop. I don’t know. What I am saying is that CafePress doesn’t want to tell the public who makes its shirts, and that makes me suspicious.

There’s more we can do here than raise our collective eyebrows quizzically and move on. There’s a precedent here from the 1990s in the garment industry, and we should follow it. Nike and Adidas and Champion and Hanes and Gildan all created brands of apparel, and all eventually had to disclose information about the sources of their brands’ production. More than that, they were forced to take moral ownership of the responsibility for the conditions under which their shirts were made. CafePress has just crossed a line, from purchaser of brand clothing to the creator of its own CafePress Exclusive Label brand of shirts. CafePress is now akin to Nike and Adidas and Champion and Hanes and Gildan, and like those apparel brands it is now responsible for the disclosure of information about who produces its shirts under what conditions.

Now that CafePress has its own Exclusive Label brand of shirts, it is time for CafePress to disclose the sources of its branded shirts and the conditions under which its shirts are manufactured. Because the Director of Merchandise for CafePress has shown that she is disinclined to release this information after a simple request, it is time to apply some pressure. We need, in short, to start a campaign of some sort until the information is released.

Here’s what I suggest.

Step 1. Write Informal E-mails to CafePress Asking for Information on Source and Labor Conditions. It may be that just a few more friendly notes are all that’s required in order to get this information from CafePress — and it may be that such information will disclose that the CafePress Exclusive Label brand is ethically produced after all. To help discover this, I’ve written a follow-up note in response to the “proprietary information” claim:

Dear Ms. Clarke,

Thank you for the information. I can only sell garments with sourcing that is clear. Are the CafePress Exclusive Label garments certified by either the FLA or the WRC? Are they produced inside the United States of America (not counting the Marianas Islands) or outside the United States of America (including the Marianas Islands)? Are the garment shops from which these CafePress Exclusive Label garments come union-made or do they come from outside union shops?

Any additional information about the compensation structure and labor rights record of the CafePress Exclusive Label garments would be of great help to me in making a decision about whether to offer these garments for sale through CafePress.

Would you be willing to send an e-mail yourself? In the e-mail, be sure to identify yourself as a purchaser of CafePress products or a CafePress shopkeeper, if you are either. Send e-mail to:

a) Cindy Clarke, Director of Merchandise for CafePress, at cclarke@cafepress.com.
b) smart07@cafepress.com — the special e-mail account which CafePress has specifically created to take further questions about new merchandise

I’d appreciate it if you’d drop a note here to let it be known that you’ve sent the e-mail. If you receive a response, please share that response, too. If we get information and it shows that CafePress has ethically sourced its apparel, then we can write some glowing articles praising CafePress for its socially responsible approach. If, on the other hand, we get information that either indicates CafePress is firmly unwilling to disclose its sources and labor conditions of shirt manufacture, we will have to kick up the requests for information a notch, to the next step:

Step 2. Take our Questions Public — begin spreading the word online (in CafePress shopkeepers’ websites, in progressive blogs) and offline (in letters to the editor of local newspapers), asking why CafePress will not release information on who makes shirts for its Exclusive Label brand, and under what conditions. At the same time, Contact the Workers Rights Consortium and Students Against Sweatshops for logistical and strategic advice. If this does not produce effects, proceed to the next step:

Step 3. Raise Awareness Among CafePress Shopkeepers. Inform shopkeepers of the current state of information about sourcing, about precedents from anti-sweatshop campaigns of the 1990s. Request that shopkeepers urge CafePress to provide sourcing information. Ask that until we know who produces shirts under the Exclusive Label brand and under what conditions, shopkeepers refrain from making Exclusive Label brand apparel available for sale on their CafePress shops.

We are at Step 1. Hopefully, Steps 2 and 3 will be entirely unnecessary. Until then, would you be willing to send a simple e-mail today?