The wage com of the FOB and mAsked and overhead elements in the CM (cut, make item in table 1 Increasin suppliers are asked fo "dpen book costing" in which all of their costs are dis- closed to the buyer is one way downward pressure has been applied by buyers on FOB prices in recent years The example in table 2 shows rices have in the case of denim jeans in recent years against an en ous increase in volume. ourcing the ever cheaper ent has fuelled industry consolidatio on the one hand on the other, the migration of apparel production to an cheaper locations tided and abetted by the expiry of the Agreement on Textiles and clothing in December 2004 which had previously ca the global market for specific apparel items up into national quotatMoreover buyers have been able to force through price reductions based on (at times, for the supplier, unrealistic increases in volume of orders. A significant contributory factor has been high street-price competition between the
fashion retailers and the entry into the market of the mass discount supermarket
retailers which has heralded the age of the €5 pair of jeans. Rockbottom
garment prices do, of course, fi nally push some consumers at least
into questioning the labour value behind such prices. Unfortunately these
cannot be readily derived from an FOB price. For this one has to generate
data from the workplace.