American Giant Hoodie
An article titled "This Is the Greatest Hoodie Ever Made" article appeared a few months ago on Slate. It's an interesting article, but what grabbed me most about it is that it's yet another example of technology disrupting traditional business models. (The author raved so much about the hoodies by American Giant, that the post went viral and caused fulfillment issues for the business).
The author stated that the key to making the greatest hoodie ever is disintermediation:
Today, when you buy a hooded sweatshirt, most of your money is going to the retailer, the brand, and the various buyers that shuttle the garment between the two. [Not to mention the retail]. The item itself costs very little to make—a $50 hoodie at the Gap likely costs about $6 or $7 to produce at an Asian manufacturing facility.
American Giant has found a loophole in the process. The loophole allows Winthrop to spend a lot more time and money producing his clothes than his competitors do. Among other things, he was able to hire a former industrial designer from Apple to rethink every aspect of the sweatshirt, from the way the fabric is woven to the color of the drawstrings around your neck. The particular loophole that Winthrop has found also explains why he wanted to chat with a technology reporter: It’s called the Internet.
We've seen this kind of disruption in manufacturing, real estate, travel, retailing (especially in some categories, such as books), and now even education... basically anything with an intermediary is ripe for disruption (if you have "Agent" in your job title, be very very scared). And it's not just consumer markets that are affected - it's the talent market as well. Here in Australia there's a lot of controversy over the skilled visa ("457 visa") program. I wonder how long the debate will be relevant in a world where traditional barriers to accessing knowledge and skills are rapidly falling away? The challenge for both employers and governments is to adapt to this changing economy and way of working and get the best talent with the least number of artificial barriers.
Related articles
- The Only Problem With the Greatest Hoodie Ever Made (slate.com)
- The Disintermediation of Corporate IT (peterhgregory.wordpress.com)
- Disintermediate! Disintermediate! How Startups Might Exterminate Agencies (business2community.com)
- "The internet is the greatest disintermediating force the world has ever known, and it's going to..." (exp.lore.com)
- For a stopgap, 457s around too long (crikey.com.au)
- 457 visa holders demand equal pay (abc.net.au)
