Talk:American Apparel/Archive 1

Criticism

I find the article unbalanced. The section on criticism takes up half the article. More information on the company as such should be added. Calvin Klein for instance has a lot of information on the history, image etc., but no section on criticism.

I would very much appreciate if experts could add some criticism section to CK, and add some more factual information to this article.

As a disclaimer, I have no problem with the existence of the criticism section as such, just with the relative size 145.18.233.228 14:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

There's a really interesting article on AA's criticism in the preview for the next issue of Clamor Magazine.[1] -- LGagnon 00:33, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

Which I had just interjected into the criticism section. I got wind of the issue via AdBusters, where it was reported that AA is threatening to sue Clamor. I hope y'all don't mind the bloat...

But I digress, there must be something positive about the company, is there? IMHO I'd be hard-pressed to make this American Apparel article more balanced by taking out the criticism; I'd rather add more positive points. Especially since the cat's already out of the bag. The fish has already rotten. The s**t has hit the fan. Or something to that effect. You know :p --Lemi4 02:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hookay, I just went over to the knowmore.org wiki where I read some significant stuffs. Like how at AA's factory the workers are paid at least twice the minimum wage, that there's free ESL lessons for the mostly Latino workers, etc. The knowmore.org article also has an interesting section on the relations between the UNITE workers' union and AA, and how they've apparently reconciled. Even the BusinessWeek article has some positive points, though it kinda highlights Dov Charney's somewhat 'progressive' views on sexuality, which, though can be considered positive, would imply the chagrin of those more conservative.

So like, can someone else carry the torch? It seems a bit counter-intuitive for myself to be spending so much time scrutinizing AA's negatives and positives, especially since I'm not even in AA's market (I live in Jakarta, Indonesia, where home industry-produced brand-free t-shirts for under four bucks are but a ten-cent busride away). --Lemi4 02:51, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

What's up with the last paragraph under criticisms? What does UNITE and their New York operations have to do with American Apparel's shop in Los Angeles? Does UNITE represent the AA workers (the article says their currents status is unknown)? Did AA used to have a factory in New York (no reference to such in the article)? Someone please elaborate on this trend, or remove it if it is superfluous. I am also of the opinion that the criticism section overshadows the main purpose of the article.

I think that the amount of criticism of AA makes perfect sense, especially over CK. CK doesn't advertise itself in any way to be a socially responsible corporation. Union-busting and sexual harassment and exploitation of employees, which are both pretty socially irresponsible, should be emphasized in discussion of AA, a company that advertises itself as being some kind of paragon of social excellence. While their CEO is a nutjob. Hmm... I think it's fair. Lequis 13:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm an avid supporter of American Apparel, but I still think that the article is relatively balanced. However, I disagree that the company "advertises itself as being some kind of paragon of social excellence." American Apparel flaunts the fact that they make all their products in the USA, and that their workers have access to health care and are paid a living wage. Other companies whose products are made in sweatshops half way around the world don't get criticism because there's no gray area--the company's labor practices are known. It's definately unfair, but we are writing an encyclopedia. Bardofcornish (talk) 02:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Union dues

$200 a month union dues seems excessive. I don't see the source in the knowmore.org article, anyways. I don't think it's true. --ColdRush 07:55, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The Union section seems to take a position of justifying American Apparel's rejection of Unionization, using the above and other unreferenced declarations ("employees would receive very few benefits not already offered for free by American Apparel"). This area should either be properly referenced, or should be removed; as it is it seems to be biased propaganda furthering the interests of the article's subject.

American Apparel, Inc

I'm trying to figure something out about the differences between these two companies. AA,Inc is the maker of the great majority of BDUs for every branch of the US military, while AA,LLC is the independently owned shop out of California. Perhaps this should be clarified a bit, but AA,Inc has almost no web presence (perhaps due to the US military being their only customer?). In fact searches for "American Apparel, Inc" mostly bring up results for the California store.24.160.150.54 07:00, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

this would be a great section to add. i would say most people in americorps think they are given clothes from this american apparel when in fact it's the gov't operation. and plenty of anarchists and other antiwar types steal things from this american apparel under this impression.

Website down?

Does anyone know why the company's website isn't working? It has been down for many weeks now. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Psychocandy85 (talk • contribs) 20:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC).

I'm going to guess bandwidth. I visited the website the other day just fine but today it's down again. Go figure. 172.191.245.98 23:41, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

"Lawsuit against Clamor magazine" section

"Clamor magazine, a Toledo, Ohio-based progressive media ..." Isn't this grammatically incorrect? Shouldn't it be the singular noun "medium", since the article "a" is also singular?

Tags

All statements in this article should be checked against their sources to see if those citations support the statement itself. There is an open discussion at WP:ANI about User:Leftcoastbreakdown's contributions to this article and Dov Charney while being employed as the "Web Content Coordinator" for American Apparel. This article may contain unsupported synthesis and original research and any controversial content not supported by a citation should be removed immediately. Thank you. Cumulus Clouds (talk) 09:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

• Editors should also utilize this list of diffs made by IP:66.151.52.0-255 (the assigned IP range of American Apparel's Los Angeles headquarters) to assess any further POV edits made to this article. Cumulus Clouds (talk) 10:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I've done a substantial rewrite to improve quality, improve encyclopedic tone, and avoid obvious POV and advertising. I have not checked it against the sources. There is also a plagiarism/copyvio concern mentioned on AN/I. I restored two accusations of sexual misconduct made against the company CEO that were deleted by this editor in one case and from the company IP on another. Although they raise BLP concerns, they are in reliable sources and they are highly relevant to the company's issues with alleged sexual harassment so they seem okay. Wikidemo (talk) 12:15, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

BTW, I reviewed all the edits of this article from the editor and the IP and have taken all into account. I did not attempt to undo each, but rather restore any deleted negative material and eliminate any puffery, defensive argumentation, etc., regardless of source. They did do some good for citations, organization, English, etc.; no point reverting those. I will discuss more on AN/IWikidemo (talk) 12:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

A couple futher notes re. recent edits. It's perfectly okay to cite things to sources available only to pay or registration sites, or sites that are not online at all; however, if two citation links are equivalent it's best to link to the more accessible one, and in other cases one may provide a "courtesy link" to a non-source online version of an offline or unavailable source. Second, there is no policy or guideline against making edits in a conflict of interest situation, just a caution. Where those edits are clerical and uncontroversial in nature there is no particular reason to distrust them. Things like correcting spellings, updating sales and other statistics (where there's no dispute), etc. In theory sales numbers ought to be cited, but in practice they often aren't, and they can be cited to self-published sources anyway.Wikidemo (talk) 16:31, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

• It would seem inappropriate to me to allow American Apparel to inflate their own statistics without sourcing that information because that strikes me as being pure original research, but I'll defer to consensus on this policy. Cumulus Clouds (talk) 20:29, 21 December 2007 (UTC)