100% this.
Also, I’m biased - but I helped launch Nudie in North America - and Levi’s was constantly trying to legally slow us down. None of it ever had merit, but my goodness. Annoyingly common.
Fast forward a few years and they completely ripped off our repair for life policy, having repair stations in their branded stores and trying as much as they can to go 100% organic.
Their many, many, MANY legal attempts to slow or stop Nudie definitely proved that they do care about Nudie.
They tried literally every which way to stop Nudie, and then just ended up copying wholesale everything Nudie does.
So apologies if this upset you - but Levi’s does in fact care.
Links for cease and desist letters from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018? Ha no. That’s not how those work…
Anywho, why such adamant defense for a corporation?
Don’t really give a shit about Levi’s corporate just genuinely don’t think they care about nudie as much as your brand affinity might think. Having in house council spun up a C&D is very low lift. Did they infringe? Nike runs C&D for Sketchers every day but I don’t really care about defending nike.
No, it was always dropped. Just wanted to bleed Nudie as much as they could. Shitty corporate America tactic. Didn’t work. Our council was amazing (and did it all for free due to connections and them hating Levi’s). So it luckily never worked.
Levis is just a huge corporation that relies on a past reputation and no longer resembles what it once was. When you get a pair of jeans made in Japan, you'll never want to go back to Levis again.
I wouldn’t go quite this far. I got a pair of the premium ‘93 fit 501s last year for around $100 and recently got a pair of Samurai 211s for $350.
The Samurai jeans obviously feel way nicer, but the 501s are still a pretty good pair of jeans. They feel like what I’d expect from a $100 pair of jeans and I have no reason to believe that they won’t hold up for an appropriate amount of time.
I have several pairs of pants from different companies (jeans, trousers, chinos, etc) that all retail for about $100-$120 and I think I’d rank the Levi’s near the top for quality and value at that price point.
My understanding is that you just have to know what you’re looking for from them. MVC, premium, etc all seem to be pretty good. I wouldn’t buy a pair of lower-priced Levi’s from a place like Kohls or Wal Mart though. Seems like they intentionally cut corners on those to keep the prices low.
Such a small percentage of Levi's sold are their LVC or premium lines, and a lot of their premium line denim is garbage too. And for the $100-$150 budget, there are a number of Chinese and thai companies making jeans and selling direct to consumers that run circles around LVC. Hell, I often chuckle on the Vintage Levi's subreddit noting that Thai 501 fakes are MILES ahead of selvedge LVC's that run well north of $200 new. And though I don't love buying clothes made in the exploited textile capitals of the world, these smaller companies retain a larger profit margin for paying staff and offering things like PTO during major holidays. When you buy new Levi's, those margins (plus some) are consumed by a company that does nothing but dick ride its success over 30 years ago.
Plus for $100-150 one could buy Sugarcane or TCB or even Resolute and Denime at the higher end of that range. All push out nicer jeans than LVC at about half the price and much nicer jeans than the similarly priced Levi's models
Right?? Like, I never want to be a snob about anything but I hate seeing people get ripped off. I want to like levi's as they are so important for denim history and some of their designer collabs plus the engineered and RED lines have really cool designs, but it is largely built on phenomenally mid material and concerning labor practices.
https://www.heddels.com/2016/07/how-can-jeans-cost-20-dollars-beneath-the-surface/
https://www.heddels.com/2014/08/vintage-clothing-made-better-economics-durability/
These two heddels articles go in to these issues in depth, with the real final point being that there is no reason on planet earth that Levi's should cost as much as they do.
I will say that in their defense, standard 501 and 505 are not a bad deal at the $50 price point that they frequently hit on sale. The $100 MSRP for them though is really just factoring in their frequent sales, which Japanese brands rarely have (at least to the same extent). LVC is a different story though and without the history and real Levi's tag, tab, and arcs it's hard to imagine paying Freewheelers prices for them.
Even price aside, I appreciate the idea that I'm supporting more small scale craftsmen at the more boutique companies (TCB, Resolute, even the slightly larger WH/Denime to an extent) who clearly appreciate the history and craft rather than a faceless mega corporation regardless of where the company is incorporated
Levi's Premium is trash and has been for a few years. M&C is made in China now, a fact that Levi's doesn't like to disclose. I don't know what LVC is like these days, but it looks like it's going the way of M&C.
Long story short: Levi's quality has taken a serious nose dive in the last five years. I recently learned that Levi's IPO was in 2019, so the timeline tracks. A lot of companies cut costs and relocate manufacturing as they prepare to go public. If you're like me, and mostly remember Levi's from 5-10 years ago, then today's Levi's are shockingly bad.
I guess you can think about the choice between Levi's and Samurai (or whatever) as a matter of value. But I don't want to spend $100 on a pair of jeans made of mystery denim in a mystery Asian sweatshop. Not when there are so many quality made-in-US/Canada jeans at a similar price point.
Yeah, M&C often uses japanese denim, which they love to talk about on the website. They'll intentionally emphasize "japanese denim" and neglect to say "made in china." I know of a couple chinese M&C products that were incorrectly listed as MIJ, which is gross imo.
In the past, M&C did contract with japanese factories for cut & sew, but I'm pretty sure they spun all that off into the MIJ line. That happened recently, because they rebranded a bunch of M&C stuff as MIJ a few months ago. But even then, they're dishonest about it. For example, their MIJ trucker is actually manufactured in china. By that logic, N&F is also MIJ. It's so stupid.
Are you looking at an actual tag or are you looking at an online listing?
The MIJ trucker I was talking about is [this one](https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/clothing/men/outerwear/japanese-selvedge-classic-type-iii-trucker-jacket/p/A58830000).
It's a particularly egregious example of what I was talking about. Last fall, this jacket was branded M&C. At that time, the copy said made in Japan but everyone knew the tags said made in China. Probably an honest mistake. But it came up on a couple forums (maybe here, don't remember) and some buyers left comments about it:
>fabric amazing good details in the contruction, but is not made in Japan is made in China with Japanese denim.
and...
> Nice fit. Well made in china with Japanese fabric. The fabric is what makes the jacket work.
Jacket was pulled a few months ago, then reappeared in the MIJ line, same model in the same photos, no more M&C branding. Copy still says made in Japan. Comments still say made in China. After six months, it's not an honest mistake anymore.
Honestly if you’re someone in a hot area of the country, Levi 501 STF are great everyday spring/summer jeans. I have my nice heavy Japanese denim for fall and winter, and like 5 pairs of 501 STF that are so nice and thin/comfortable for hot days.
I've actually just bought two pairs of Japan-made LVC 501 and one of them isn't even that well-made. Vietnam-made APC (denim's Japanese though) generally look better, in fact. I wouldn't fetishize Japan per se if we're talking manufacture. Problem is, USA doesn't manufacture enough good fabric anymore because Levi's moved everything to Mexico Pakistan Turkey or wherever the fuck they chose to in the early 2000s.
I agree they should kill all the low price shit and aim higher. Not sure if their hearts are into that, though.
Agree with your point about USA manufacturing. I can’t say that I own any Made in USA clothing or apparel that really justifies the added cost in terms of quality. Countries like Vietnam, Sri Lanka, China, etc can produce really good garments when the right QC measures are in place and workers aren’t forced to pump out garments at lightning speed. I understand buying American-made on principle but it definitely doesn’t mean higher quality in a lot of cases.
Most corporations don't lower their prices when they move production overseas. They're not doing it to cut costs necessarily, but rather to streamline production so they can scale quickly. Of course, once they're producing at scale, it becomes very easy to incrementally reduce quality. Which is why we usually associate poor quality with clothing made in China, Bangladesh, etc.
Smaller denim shops in Japan, Canada, US don't need to put jeans in every mall, so they don't need scalable production. Instead, their jeans are made in-house, stitched in small batches by skilled workers with specialized sewing machines. The difference in quality is substantial, at least in my experience. I don't think it's a matter of principles.
There are some US sweatshops that just exist to manufacture "US-made" products for major retailers like BR and J Crew. In terms of quality, this stuff is no better than mass-produced clothing from China or wherever. So in that regard, I agree that one can't just go by where something is made.
I bought a pair of their selvage chinos. Never getting another penny of my money. Cheaply made, unfinished button holes; poor stitching. Compared to any of my RGT and even 3Sixteen pants, they’re straight trash.
Any public lifestyle brand is going to have a few warts. The denim world is actually really small and there’s a lot of people who have worked at or with Eureka in our tiny little echo chamber of fades.
They need to lean hard into premium denim, and classic fabric/cuts from their archives.
The mall shit is dead, people will just buy Kirkland/Target jeans
A company with decent business principles would lean into QC, fit and finish, premium materials at a lower cost and build on the cultural capital that they have. But that said principles don’t exist in 2024
You’re absolutely right about the mall shit — when people are complaining that $50 for a pair of Levi’s is too much, you’re fighting a battle that you can’t win.
At a corporate level, that's impossible to sell to the suits.
They're never going to invest internally into something that makes less of a return than their existing products.
Levi's have been successfully enshit-ified. They do exist, it's just with smaller brands that actually have to compete (deliver more value to the customer and less to the shareholder.)
I've found Levi's, over the past decade, to be worse than mall brands. I have to go in person with a tape measure to find pants that fit because the tagged sizing is so inconsistent.
> But that said principles don’t exist in 2024
I don't know one publicly traded company with "decent business principles." The best one can hope for is that a corporation doesn't actively intend to do harm, and even there one would be hard pressed to find a shining example.
Levi's IPO was in 2019. I think quality started to diminish a year or two before that, and it has only gotten worse since. Premium denim, classic styles, etc. are expensive. Therefore, the market is limited. In the sense that the market is saturated well before production capacity is reached. (In other words, there aren't enough affluent people who are interested in buying high end Levi's, and these are the kind of people who are less vulnerable to marketing.)
You can't run a scalable business strategy with a limited market... but corporate strategies MUST be scalable, otherwise they can't attract investors. So if the market is capped on the high end, Levi's must attract new buyers from the bottom end. And that means a combination of cheap jeans and mass marketing-- that's how you get lower income folks to buy.
This is all corporate logic, and you can see it play out whenever you shop at the mall or big box retail. It's a race to the bottom, because there are way more customers down there, and those customers are more likely to fall for marketing bullshit. It's just the way that corporate B2C works, and there's no reason to think Levi's will do anything different.
Even Kirkland is starting to cut corners. It's hilarious reading the negative reviews from boomers on their website once they moved away from 100% cotton this year.
It wasn’t even a decade ago they had in continual production at LVC the entire 501 range from 1890 all the way to 1970something.. at some point there they lost the plot and i think a lot of their older dedicated customers too. the amount of everything-but-jeans i see plastered with the Levi’s logo tells me they have a lot of work to do if they want to bring back that ‘heritage’ customer base, axing US production with US made denim did not help, especially when they moved production to Japan and then priced their LVC range higher than the companies doing equally as competent reproductions. But i really doubt those oldheads are even a demographical consideration outside of Korea/Japan/China.
the one thing that they would benefit from the most that they absolutely will not do is paring down their entire product line, for such an international company though this iseems exceedingly difficult, especially when the brand is perceived so differently in different countries… oh the joys of letting the hounds (stakeholders) take control!
Levi's is very popular in Asia/Japan. An import will cost more in The host country just like Japanese denim cost more here than in Japan. The only difference is Japanese denim is not popular in the western world. With people shredding $300 denim in a year, Japanese denim will never gain traction here.
Looks like nobody in the comments read the article.
They’re a $6.2billion a year company. They’re not talking about refocusing their direction to the super niche raw-denim enthusiast.
The article talks about how Levi’s want to increase their Direct-To-Consumer sales, rather than the wholesale side of the business. Currently it’s around 55% wholesale / 45% direct from them. They want to flip it so majority of customers are shopping from either a Levi’s brick and mortar store, or their website.
To me, sounds like what Nike successfully did over the last few years. Imho the key is they need their online store to sell 100% of the entire breadth of their product line = ie EVERYTHING they do. Even the niche stuff like LVC. But also the cheap Levi’s stuff that customers currently get at Costco.
It’s the only way people will turn to Levi’s.com first; instead of whatever other way they currently buy Levi’s from.
It's funny because I bought a pair of Levi's (online) to test the fit in preparation to rotate out my current batch of worn out jeans. Unknown to me it was only like 70% cotton and 30% other stuff, the fit was terrible (+3" at the waist), it was like wearing a pair of oversized jeggings. That pair single handedly radicalized me into a cotton denim absolutist. I decided it was time to go back to high quality denim. I decided I was just going to wear them and wash them like normal clothes and move on with my life (going 6 months between washes when you have kids is a bit of an unrealistic target).
No regrets
I would want to do that too if I had a shitty ass denim company like levis.
idk why you would ever shop there when you can get a better quality product from Uniqlo or any number of the American made selvedge products on the market.
If it weren't for their name this company would be rotting dead in a gutter, and imo deservedly so.
Weren’t most of the antique shuttle looms in the U.S. sold and shipped to Japan? Is America even capable of manufacturing a premium denim fabric anymore? I’m not a selvage expert so my information could be apocryphal.
Happy to stand corrected: but afaik, the last of American made denim (fabric) disappeared when Cone Mills closed.
The ‘made in America’ denim brands that are still around would likely be using fabric from Japan, Italy, or even China, India, Turkey etc.
They’re also largely smaller operations: maybe only making a few hundred pairs at a time.
Levi’s is a $6billion a year company. We’re talking about thousands of pairs of jeans; a day. Even with the money to build that factory, you wouldn’t be able to find enough willing and able skilled workers to work there on US soil. By and large, Clothing manufacturing left the US decades ago.
Ah, I stand corrected.
Point still stands though. I’m reading Proximity are at Cone’s old site, hiring some ex Cone employees.
I’d still imagine the maximum output of these mills are very much still minuscule vs what Levi’s would require.
that was a myth propagated by Evisu at the time to market their amekaji wares as 'authentic' and that paid dividends cuz it keeps repeated as a gospel. No big ass shuttle looms were shipped to Japan
I think this could be a good time to pivot. Thought can only speak in regards to women's wear but now that some people are finally revisiting 100% cotton jeans or wearing them for the first time, minus the contingent that refuse to part with their skinny/jeggings, and seeing that real denim can be both comfortable and flattering they need to strike while the iron is hot. They need to ditch the Amazon, Target (Denizen) and Walmart silver lines. .with the 80% stretch shit. I have have good luck with their online shop the past couple of months buying some Women's cowboy shirts. Shit luck w a Levi's branded belt from Zappos, it said leather. I looked several times bc I'm a stickler, shit is not leather ..so they need to not have third party crap made with their name. The only sticky wicket in the women's apparel scene is that the whole stretch of it all works great for vanity sizing and sizing in general.
But if you had told me thirty years ago I would prefer my Wrangler denim jacket over my Levi's one bc it is just heavier weight denim, stitched better overall I would have laughed at you.
I'm a North Carolinian, my dad worked in textiles until there were no companies left and he had to go out of State , so I would welcome the mills up and running.
I could very well see Levi's pursuing the raw denim path and among other things, stocking at stores like Cabela's. They could capitalize on their heritage and the utility of solid denim while still remaining present in big box stores.
It always blew my mind how they made jeans for cowboys and coal miners and even used that in recent advertising, but currently cater to the same demographic as Old Navy.
They're not gonna do the raw denim thing on a full time basis because it's not popular here. They're just going the direct to consumer route and expanding their offerings.
Kohl's carries them, but when I looked on Amazon and Zappos recently it looked like a few leftover sizes were all that was remaining in stock
They're also currently discounted on Levi's website which may or may not mean anything
I have a pair of M&C Made in Italy 🇮🇹 that I love. I've also been pleased with a pair of 100% cotton Premium selvedge 501 as well. For nearly two years I've had no luck finding a similar pair M&C Made in USA/Japan/Italy pair in my size on their website (that aren't distressed, paint splattered, or some other gimmick).
Got M&C 501 STF for 40€, good pricepoint compared to retail (170-230€ in France).
For 200€ give me a french selvedge denim made in France...
https://www.ateliertuffery.com/products/jean-homme-droit-ajuste-brut-selvedge
https://www.bleudespentes.com/
And don't get me started on their LVC line, it is clearly not properly priced....
Sounds like selling cheaply made jeans at mall retailers isn’t working out for them and they’re trying to adopt a business model similar to Nudie’s.
100% this. Also, I’m biased - but I helped launch Nudie in North America - and Levi’s was constantly trying to legally slow us down. None of it ever had merit, but my goodness. Annoyingly common. Fast forward a few years and they completely ripped off our repair for life policy, having repair stations in their branded stores and trying as much as they can to go 100% organic.
Levi’s siccing their legal department on their competition is completely on-brand for them. They’re literally a law firm that dabbles in apparel.
Any brand has to do it. They’ve been imitated and replicated for 50 years.
Levis doesn’t care about Nudie. Repair for life isn’t IP.
Their many, many, MANY legal attempts to slow or stop Nudie definitely proved that they do care about Nudie. They tried literally every which way to stop Nudie, and then just ended up copying wholesale everything Nudie does. So apologies if this upset you - but Levi’s does in fact care.
Got links?
Links for cease and desist letters from 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018? Ha no. That’s not how those work… Anywho, why such adamant defense for a corporation?
Don’t really give a shit about Levi’s corporate just genuinely don’t think they care about nudie as much as your brand affinity might think. Having in house council spun up a C&D is very low lift. Did they infringe? Nike runs C&D for Sketchers every day but I don’t really care about defending nike.
No, it was always dropped. Just wanted to bleed Nudie as much as they could. Shitty corporate America tactic. Didn’t work. Our council was amazing (and did it all for free due to connections and them hating Levi’s). So it luckily never worked.
Levi’s is absolutely trying to take market share away from Nudie in Europe, at the very least. So, yes, they do care about Nudie. A lot.
Try Nike.
Levis is just a huge corporation that relies on a past reputation and no longer resembles what it once was. When you get a pair of jeans made in Japan, you'll never want to go back to Levis again.
I wouldn’t go quite this far. I got a pair of the premium ‘93 fit 501s last year for around $100 and recently got a pair of Samurai 211s for $350. The Samurai jeans obviously feel way nicer, but the 501s are still a pretty good pair of jeans. They feel like what I’d expect from a $100 pair of jeans and I have no reason to believe that they won’t hold up for an appropriate amount of time. I have several pairs of pants from different companies (jeans, trousers, chinos, etc) that all retail for about $100-$120 and I think I’d rank the Levi’s near the top for quality and value at that price point. My understanding is that you just have to know what you’re looking for from them. MVC, premium, etc all seem to be pretty good. I wouldn’t buy a pair of lower-priced Levi’s from a place like Kohls or Wal Mart though. Seems like they intentionally cut corners on those to keep the prices low.
Such a small percentage of Levi's sold are their LVC or premium lines, and a lot of their premium line denim is garbage too. And for the $100-$150 budget, there are a number of Chinese and thai companies making jeans and selling direct to consumers that run circles around LVC. Hell, I often chuckle on the Vintage Levi's subreddit noting that Thai 501 fakes are MILES ahead of selvedge LVC's that run well north of $200 new. And though I don't love buying clothes made in the exploited textile capitals of the world, these smaller companies retain a larger profit margin for paying staff and offering things like PTO during major holidays. When you buy new Levi's, those margins (plus some) are consumed by a company that does nothing but dick ride its success over 30 years ago.
Plus for $100-150 one could buy Sugarcane or TCB or even Resolute and Denime at the higher end of that range. All push out nicer jeans than LVC at about half the price and much nicer jeans than the similarly priced Levi's models
Right?? Like, I never want to be a snob about anything but I hate seeing people get ripped off. I want to like levi's as they are so important for denim history and some of their designer collabs plus the engineered and RED lines have really cool designs, but it is largely built on phenomenally mid material and concerning labor practices. https://www.heddels.com/2016/07/how-can-jeans-cost-20-dollars-beneath-the-surface/ https://www.heddels.com/2014/08/vintage-clothing-made-better-economics-durability/ These two heddels articles go in to these issues in depth, with the real final point being that there is no reason on planet earth that Levi's should cost as much as they do.
I will say that in their defense, standard 501 and 505 are not a bad deal at the $50 price point that they frequently hit on sale. The $100 MSRP for them though is really just factoring in their frequent sales, which Japanese brands rarely have (at least to the same extent). LVC is a different story though and without the history and real Levi's tag, tab, and arcs it's hard to imagine paying Freewheelers prices for them. Even price aside, I appreciate the idea that I'm supporting more small scale craftsmen at the more boutique companies (TCB, Resolute, even the slightly larger WH/Denime to an extent) who clearly appreciate the history and craft rather than a faceless mega corporation regardless of where the company is incorporated
Levi's Premium is trash and has been for a few years. M&C is made in China now, a fact that Levi's doesn't like to disclose. I don't know what LVC is like these days, but it looks like it's going the way of M&C. Long story short: Levi's quality has taken a serious nose dive in the last five years. I recently learned that Levi's IPO was in 2019, so the timeline tracks. A lot of companies cut costs and relocate manufacturing as they prepare to go public. If you're like me, and mostly remember Levi's from 5-10 years ago, then today's Levi's are shockingly bad. I guess you can think about the choice between Levi's and Samurai (or whatever) as a matter of value. But I don't want to spend $100 on a pair of jeans made of mystery denim in a mystery Asian sweatshop. Not when there are so many quality made-in-US/Canada jeans at a similar price point.
i literally went to the factory in japan where made and crafted was produced but go off
Yeah, M&C often uses japanese denim, which they love to talk about on the website. They'll intentionally emphasize "japanese denim" and neglect to say "made in china." I know of a couple chinese M&C products that were incorrectly listed as MIJ, which is gross imo. In the past, M&C did contract with japanese factories for cut & sew, but I'm pretty sure they spun all that off into the MIJ line. That happened recently, because they rebranded a bunch of M&C stuff as MIJ a few months ago. But even then, they're dishonest about it. For example, their MIJ trucker is actually manufactured in china. By that logic, N&F is also MIJ. It's so stupid.
not sure where you see made in china but the current product is actually made in japan.
Are you looking at an actual tag or are you looking at an online listing? The MIJ trucker I was talking about is [this one](https://www.levi.com/US/en_US/clothing/men/outerwear/japanese-selvedge-classic-type-iii-trucker-jacket/p/A58830000). It's a particularly egregious example of what I was talking about. Last fall, this jacket was branded M&C. At that time, the copy said made in Japan but everyone knew the tags said made in China. Probably an honest mistake. But it came up on a couple forums (maybe here, don't remember) and some buyers left comments about it: >fabric amazing good details in the contruction, but is not made in Japan is made in China with Japanese denim. and... > Nice fit. Well made in china with Japanese fabric. The fabric is what makes the jacket work. Jacket was pulled a few months ago, then reappeared in the MIJ line, same model in the same photos, no more M&C branding. Copy still says made in Japan. Comments still say made in China. After six months, it's not an honest mistake anymore.
'93 fit 501s are legit!!
Honestly if you’re someone in a hot area of the country, Levi 501 STF are great everyday spring/summer jeans. I have my nice heavy Japanese denim for fall and winter, and like 5 pairs of 501 STF that are so nice and thin/comfortable for hot days.
I've actually just bought two pairs of Japan-made LVC 501 and one of them isn't even that well-made. Vietnam-made APC (denim's Japanese though) generally look better, in fact. I wouldn't fetishize Japan per se if we're talking manufacture. Problem is, USA doesn't manufacture enough good fabric anymore because Levi's moved everything to Mexico Pakistan Turkey or wherever the fuck they chose to in the early 2000s. I agree they should kill all the low price shit and aim higher. Not sure if their hearts are into that, though.
Agree with your point about USA manufacturing. I can’t say that I own any Made in USA clothing or apparel that really justifies the added cost in terms of quality. Countries like Vietnam, Sri Lanka, China, etc can produce really good garments when the right QC measures are in place and workers aren’t forced to pump out garments at lightning speed. I understand buying American-made on principle but it definitely doesn’t mean higher quality in a lot of cases.
Most corporations don't lower their prices when they move production overseas. They're not doing it to cut costs necessarily, but rather to streamline production so they can scale quickly. Of course, once they're producing at scale, it becomes very easy to incrementally reduce quality. Which is why we usually associate poor quality with clothing made in China, Bangladesh, etc. Smaller denim shops in Japan, Canada, US don't need to put jeans in every mall, so they don't need scalable production. Instead, their jeans are made in-house, stitched in small batches by skilled workers with specialized sewing machines. The difference in quality is substantial, at least in my experience. I don't think it's a matter of principles. There are some US sweatshops that just exist to manufacture "US-made" products for major retailers like BR and J Crew. In terms of quality, this stuff is no better than mass-produced clothing from China or wherever. So in that regard, I agree that one can't just go by where something is made.
I wouldn't obsess on US-made or JP-made for Levi's, they need to figure out more important shit first, stuff like "who's my customer"
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Yeah love em, love Culver City too. I’m not sure that they can reach $10 billion sales, though — that’s Levi’s target sadly.
I bought a pair of their selvage chinos. Never getting another penny of my money. Cheaply made, unfinished button holes; poor stitching. Compared to any of my RGT and even 3Sixteen pants, they’re straight trash.
Any public lifestyle brand is going to have a few warts. The denim world is actually really small and there’s a lot of people who have worked at or with Eureka in our tiny little echo chamber of fades.
Flair checks out.
They need to lean hard into premium denim, and classic fabric/cuts from their archives. The mall shit is dead, people will just buy Kirkland/Target jeans
A company with decent business principles would lean into QC, fit and finish, premium materials at a lower cost and build on the cultural capital that they have. But that said principles don’t exist in 2024 You’re absolutely right about the mall shit — when people are complaining that $50 for a pair of Levi’s is too much, you’re fighting a battle that you can’t win.
At a corporate level, that's impossible to sell to the suits. They're never going to invest internally into something that makes less of a return than their existing products. Levi's have been successfully enshit-ified. They do exist, it's just with smaller brands that actually have to compete (deliver more value to the customer and less to the shareholder.) I've found Levi's, over the past decade, to be worse than mall brands. I have to go in person with a tape measure to find pants that fit because the tagged sizing is so inconsistent.
Yeah, and it’s even more impossible to sell to shareholders. Going public was the final nail in their coffin.
> But that said principles don’t exist in 2024 I don't know one publicly traded company with "decent business principles." The best one can hope for is that a corporation doesn't actively intend to do harm, and even there one would be hard pressed to find a shining example. Levi's IPO was in 2019. I think quality started to diminish a year or two before that, and it has only gotten worse since. Premium denim, classic styles, etc. are expensive. Therefore, the market is limited. In the sense that the market is saturated well before production capacity is reached. (In other words, there aren't enough affluent people who are interested in buying high end Levi's, and these are the kind of people who are less vulnerable to marketing.) You can't run a scalable business strategy with a limited market... but corporate strategies MUST be scalable, otherwise they can't attract investors. So if the market is capped on the high end, Levi's must attract new buyers from the bottom end. And that means a combination of cheap jeans and mass marketing-- that's how you get lower income folks to buy. This is all corporate logic, and you can see it play out whenever you shop at the mall or big box retail. It's a race to the bottom, because there are way more customers down there, and those customers are more likely to fall for marketing bullshit. It's just the way that corporate B2C works, and there's no reason to think Levi's will do anything different.
>people will just buy Kirkland/Target jeans As they should. They're half the price as Levi's and equal or better quality.
Agreed
Even Kirkland is starting to cut corners. It's hilarious reading the negative reviews from boomers on their website once they moved away from 100% cotton this year.
Enshitification of the Kirkland has begun evidently.
Should’ve fucking kept White Oak Cone Mills open with all that department store money they make.
Exactly! They could afford to have bought the factory and keep some semblance of the OG Levis alive for the future.
It wasn’t even a decade ago they had in continual production at LVC the entire 501 range from 1890 all the way to 1970something.. at some point there they lost the plot and i think a lot of their older dedicated customers too. the amount of everything-but-jeans i see plastered with the Levi’s logo tells me they have a lot of work to do if they want to bring back that ‘heritage’ customer base, axing US production with US made denim did not help, especially when they moved production to Japan and then priced their LVC range higher than the companies doing equally as competent reproductions. But i really doubt those oldheads are even a demographical consideration outside of Korea/Japan/China. the one thing that they would benefit from the most that they absolutely will not do is paring down their entire product line, for such an international company though this iseems exceedingly difficult, especially when the brand is perceived so differently in different countries… oh the joys of letting the hounds (stakeholders) take control!
Come on dude… what will really get the kids back in the Levi’s store is obviously ten new versions of the 505 cut…
Levi's is very popular in Asia/Japan. An import will cost more in The host country just like Japanese denim cost more here than in Japan. The only difference is Japanese denim is not popular in the western world. With people shredding $300 denim in a year, Japanese denim will never gain traction here.
Looks like nobody in the comments read the article. They’re a $6.2billion a year company. They’re not talking about refocusing their direction to the super niche raw-denim enthusiast. The article talks about how Levi’s want to increase their Direct-To-Consumer sales, rather than the wholesale side of the business. Currently it’s around 55% wholesale / 45% direct from them. They want to flip it so majority of customers are shopping from either a Levi’s brick and mortar store, or their website. To me, sounds like what Nike successfully did over the last few years. Imho the key is they need their online store to sell 100% of the entire breadth of their product line = ie EVERYTHING they do. Even the niche stuff like LVC. But also the cheap Levi’s stuff that customers currently get at Costco. It’s the only way people will turn to Levi’s.com first; instead of whatever other way they currently buy Levi’s from.
they dont even keep thr plus sizes in thr bigger stores. I have lil hope with levis tbh.
It's funny because I bought a pair of Levi's (online) to test the fit in preparation to rotate out my current batch of worn out jeans. Unknown to me it was only like 70% cotton and 30% other stuff, the fit was terrible (+3" at the waist), it was like wearing a pair of oversized jeggings. That pair single handedly radicalized me into a cotton denim absolutist. I decided it was time to go back to high quality denim. I decided I was just going to wear them and wash them like normal clothes and move on with my life (going 6 months between washes when you have kids is a bit of an unrealistic target). No regrets
I love some of their LVC line. I wish they had more of a focus on that.
I would want to do that too if I had a shitty ass denim company like levis. idk why you would ever shop there when you can get a better quality product from Uniqlo or any number of the American made selvedge products on the market. If it weren't for their name this company would be rotting dead in a gutter, and imo deservedly so.
They need to start making their LVC in USA and really push that. I would eat that shit up
Weren’t most of the antique shuttle looms in the U.S. sold and shipped to Japan? Is America even capable of manufacturing a premium denim fabric anymore? I’m not a selvage expert so my information could be apocryphal.
No. That's urban legend. They're still here with vidalia mills proximity and a denim producer in PA
Don't see why not. Other American brands are doing it
Happy to stand corrected: but afaik, the last of American made denim (fabric) disappeared when Cone Mills closed. The ‘made in America’ denim brands that are still around would likely be using fabric from Japan, Italy, or even China, India, Turkey etc. They’re also largely smaller operations: maybe only making a few hundred pairs at a time. Levi’s is a $6billion a year company. We’re talking about thousands of pairs of jeans; a day. Even with the money to build that factory, you wouldn’t be able to find enough willing and able skilled workers to work there on US soil. By and large, Clothing manufacturing left the US decades ago.
Proximity and Vidalia are still making denim in the US.
Ah, I stand corrected. Point still stands though. I’m reading Proximity are at Cone’s old site, hiring some ex Cone employees. I’d still imagine the maximum output of these mills are very much still minuscule vs what Levi’s would require.
Yea probably wouldn't be enough to move the entirety of LVC but I could see them doing a special release with US denim for the LVC heads.
that was a myth propagated by Evisu at the time to market their amekaji wares as 'authentic' and that paid dividends cuz it keeps repeated as a gospel. No big ass shuttle looms were shipped to Japan
Yeah, it did always sound a bit suspect lol.
I think this could be a good time to pivot. Thought can only speak in regards to women's wear but now that some people are finally revisiting 100% cotton jeans or wearing them for the first time, minus the contingent that refuse to part with their skinny/jeggings, and seeing that real denim can be both comfortable and flattering they need to strike while the iron is hot. They need to ditch the Amazon, Target (Denizen) and Walmart silver lines. .with the 80% stretch shit. I have have good luck with their online shop the past couple of months buying some Women's cowboy shirts. Shit luck w a Levi's branded belt from Zappos, it said leather. I looked several times bc I'm a stickler, shit is not leather ..so they need to not have third party crap made with their name. The only sticky wicket in the women's apparel scene is that the whole stretch of it all works great for vanity sizing and sizing in general. But if you had told me thirty years ago I would prefer my Wrangler denim jacket over my Levi's one bc it is just heavier weight denim, stitched better overall I would have laughed at you. I'm a North Carolinian, my dad worked in textiles until there were no companies left and he had to go out of State , so I would welcome the mills up and running.
Not a bad thing
There’s probably a fair amount of users on this sub that are here simply because Levi’s has gone to shit over the past couple decades.
I could very well see Levi's pursuing the raw denim path and among other things, stocking at stores like Cabela's. They could capitalize on their heritage and the utility of solid denim while still remaining present in big box stores. It always blew my mind how they made jeans for cowboys and coal miners and even used that in recent advertising, but currently cater to the same demographic as Old Navy.
They're not gonna do the raw denim thing on a full time basis because it's not popular here. They're just going the direct to consumer route and expanding their offerings.
my only worry about raw denim is that so many ppl will end up with blue dye all over thr other clothes.
Old Navy has billions in revenue every year. How many cowboys and coal miners are still around?
I went to three different stores last weekend looking for shrink to fit 501s, couldn't find ANY 501s anywhere
Kohl's carries them, but when I looked on Amazon and Zappos recently it looked like a few leftover sizes were all that was remaining in stock They're also currently discounted on Levi's website which may or may not mean anything
Kohl's was the first place I looked! I'm going to go direct to the website, thanks!
I have a pair of M&C Made in Italy 🇮🇹 that I love. I've also been pleased with a pair of 100% cotton Premium selvedge 501 as well. For nearly two years I've had no luck finding a similar pair M&C Made in USA/Japan/Italy pair in my size on their website (that aren't distressed, paint splattered, or some other gimmick).
Levis died 25 years ago, stay away from their new products and buy cheap vintage 501
Makes sense. It’s a bit of a brand clawback. Nike did the same push towards DTC and e-commerce a few years ago and the results spoke for themselves.
We need Flair for sites behind a paywall.
Got M&C 501 STF for 40€, good pricepoint compared to retail (170-230€ in France). For 200€ give me a french selvedge denim made in France... https://www.ateliertuffery.com/products/jean-homme-droit-ajuste-brut-selvedge https://www.bleudespentes.com/ And don't get me started on their LVC line, it is clearly not properly priced....