Production
American Apparel bases its manufacturing in an seven-story 800,000-square-foot (74,000 m2) factory in downtown Los Angeles, California where it produces more than 55,000 different products and garments.
The company also owns and operates its own fabric dye house, garment dye house, and knitting facility, all based in Los Angeles. American Apparel has decided not to outsource its labor, paying factory workers an average of over twelve dollars an hour and often more than $100 a day. Garment workers for similar American companies in China earn approximately 40 cents per hour. It claims to have the 'highest earning apparel workers in the world'.
The company uses "team manufacturing" which pools the strongest workers towards priority orders. Each team functions autonomously and determines its own daily production schedule, giving them control over their own hourly wages. After its implementation, garment production tripled and required a less than 20% staff increase. The factory claims to have the capacity to produce 1 million shirts per week and manufacture 275,000 pieces a day. According to The New York Times it is the largest single garment factory in the United States and employs over 4,000 people across two buildings.
A banner on top of the downtown factory states "American Apparel is an Industrial Revolution." As of December 2008, banners on top of the factories state "Legalize LA" and "Immigration Reform Now!"
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“The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.”
—Ernest Gellner (b. 1925)