We’re often asked to explain why the price of our clothing is higher than that of other brands.  We understand that price is an issue for many people wanting to embrace a new brand and/or support a USA brand.

We’ve always been transparent in how we conduct our business and we believe if we communicate our costs, you’ll find our pricing pragmatic and responsible.

Imported Pricing vs American Made Pricing

The largest driver of our pricing is USA labor.  Compared to what our competitors pay for overseas labor, the cost of making a product in America is staggering; doubling the retail price of a garment.

We know first-hand the differences in cost between imported and American made clothing.  We started out importing our product, and our prices were less than half of what they are today.

If you were to compare Todd Shelton costs to good department stores brands – you’d find that we pay more for one yard of t-shirt fabric knitted in the USA, than they pay for the entire finished imported t-shirt.  Our finished t-shirt will cost us five times what these importers will pay.

This example not only applies to t-shirts, it’s the same relationship for all garments.

The Cost of Making in America

The shops that we work with here in the United States (their owners and employees), merely make their ends meet; none that we know of are flourishing financially.

American apparel manufacturing has been squeezed so hard from low-cost foreign competition, there’s no excess.  Apparel manufacturing wages are among the lowest in American manufacturing.  It’s simply about survival for these American manufacturing shops.

If one were to think the cost to produce in the USA was unreasonably high, it would not only be wrong – it would be unfair.  The cost of doing business, labor laws, and environmental laws in these foreign countries, are incomparable to that of the United States.

Todd Shelton Compared to Good Department Store Brands

We could reduce our prices to be more competitive with good department brands, if we used a lesser cost, lesser quality fabric.  However, we pay a premium to have a product cut and sewn in the United States, it would be a shame to dumb-down the product with a low cost, low quality fabric.  We carefully select fabrics from the best mills internationally, and we pay a premium for them, three to four times that of merely adequate fabrics.

Todd Shelton Compared to Higher Priced Brands

One of the simplest ways consumers gauge quality is price; the higher the price, the better the quality.

However, we would put any of our products in a ‘quality competition’ with any brand.  The most successful brands, the highest priced brands, the brands that get the best press; none are “better” than the Todd Shelton brand.

If you compare a Todd Shelton product at $120 to the same type of product at $180 or more in a retail store, the difference in price is not quality related.  The difference in price is retail markup.

We choose to sell directly to you, bypassing the traditional wholesale/retail channel.  If we wholesaled our product to retail stores, our prices would double.  If we operated retail stores, incurring the property and staff costs of a store, our prices would increase.

Selling direct enables us to keep high-quality clothing priced as reasonably as possible.  Additionally, selling direct is the only way we can make our product in the USA and price it within reach of the average American.

In Conclusion

We challenge you to find a brand that produces a line of clothing of the same quality, exclusively in the USA, at a lower price.  We know our prices are higher than some widely distributed brands, but we’ve done everything possible to keep our pricing as low as possible while still making a world-class product.