New Walmart Offering - Harris Tweed

[mookien]

How on God's green earth are they able to make and sell these things out of Harris tweed? The cost of the tweed alne exceeds the original price.

Could it be old stock fabric that was purchased at a discount to create inventory space for this year's weaves?

My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the cost of a Harris Tweed jacket can be broken down from highest to lowest as follows: retail markup, sewing, distribution, and cloth. A huge company like Walmart will pay rock bottom (producer cost + a negotiated profit for the weaver) for LOTS of cloth, ship it to a 3rd-world country for sewing, and then distribute and sell it through their own wholesale channel and retail "shops".

They save money at all four steps and largely control the quality at each step, eg assure that the quality of the cloth and sewing meets their minimum standard before final payment. Because they sell retail in very large volume, their unit mark up can be much less than the "average" clothing store. At $75 per jacket, they clearly are not selling at a loss.

Now, if someone who knows the actual answer would weigh in and tell us the "real story".