Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Olympics /uniforms made in china /if you were a athlete what would you do
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Old 07-13-2012, 11:09 AM
gmcneill gmcneill is offline
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To answer nitehawk's specific question, I'd wear the uniform with pride!

Addressing the larger issue is not simple. The US Olympic organization does not receive federal government funding; it depends on donations, sponsorships, and partnerships to survive.

Ralph Lauren is one such sponsor. RL has it's business reasons for making the manufacturing decisions that it has. And as the posters above stated, it all comes down to cost. And for companies, lower costs generally result in a better bottom line.

That said, however, given the enormous exposure of and historically high demand for Olympic apparel and other products (read, high profits from sales to the US consumer), one would hope that RL and other US Olympic Team sponsors/partners would expend the extra effort to utilize US based workers over foreign workers to make Olympic-based products, even if doing so cuts into the profit margin. The companies would still make money.

I'm thinking that any such company could increase the price tag on it's Olympic products by the "extra pennies" to offset manufacturing costs w/out push back from the US consumer.