Competitive and Fair

“Are our clients willing to pay more or be “easy” on us because we’re an impact-driven nonprofit? The short answer is no…”

This article, from last Friday’s New York Times, struck a chord with us: it profiles a garment factory in the Dominican Republic, where employees are paid three times the average pay of apparel workers in the country and treated with dignity.  The garment factory is operated by Knights Apparel, a company that makes college-logo clothing.

The factory is billed here as a “high-minded experiment”, a project of passion for one socially minded company.  Though paying higher wages means their costs are higher than their competitors’, Knights says it will not ask its customers to pay more. Instead, the company absorbs the added expense and loses some profit on each shirt. But Knights’ prices are still high, in line with more premium brands like Nike and Adidas–the company says this is warranted by their high-quality processes and materials. In order to gain an edge amongst these major players, it will be critical to make their message of impact compelling to consumers.

For us, this points to a question we get often: are our clients willing to pay more or be “easy” on us because we’re an impact-driven nonprofit? The short answer is no. The longer answer is that we would never ask them to–we believe that a large part of our impact comes from bringing the rigor and meritocratic culture of the international marketplace to Cambodia and Laos, emerging markets that are only now learning how to compete on a global stage. Sustainability is one of our core principles, and if our pricing, quality and services are not competitive in the market, we are not sustainable as a business or as an agent of change.

We’re proud that we are able to be a competitive leader in the digitization industry, delivering high-quality services at a competitive price, while also having a social impact–and it’s our hope that our clients feel that pride, too.

1. PC Boxen says:

   September 4, 2010 at 1:20 PM

   i heard a lot just about that in the last few days and i consider it might be true. Eventhough i believe everyone is responsible for himself. No Offense, Just my