Slowly American Apparel has restricted the flow of it's products to the wholesale market to create a monopoly in the retail market for their basic t-shirts. The end result is that the consumer is being ripped off by higher prices than are reasonable for their basic t-shirts. As a reseller of t-shirts for screenprinting I find this alarming in many ways. Number one it eliminates a major product from my offerings which restricts who I can and cannot print for because of the availability of American Apparel t-shirts. Two, it has affected my ability to increase my market share by being forced out of the market for basic American Apparel t-shirts. Three, it has limited my companies ability to create a profit from buying and selling t-shirts.
Is this legal? Is this right? My personal opinion is that is not legal and there is definite harm being done to the consumer so that American Apparel can increase it's profits in an unfair way. I am not sure how far I can go to fight this, but it is alarming that they have gotten this far by implementing such a non-American strategy in the manipulation of the pricing of their products to the retail customer.
