Controversy has stirred over “business ethics” after an investigative report revealed that global brand ‘WORLD’ is selling apparel items sourced from Bangladesh as “Made in New Zealand”.
The Spinoff, a New Zealand online opinion and commentary magazine, published an investigative report in this regard on May 7, 2018, which revealed that multiple garments labelled as made in New Zealand are actually manufactured in China and Bangladesh.
For the past seven years, the WORLD brand, co-founded by New Zealand’s most out-spoken critic of off-shore manufacturing Denise L’Estrange-Corbet, has been selling t-shirts, sweatshirts and sweatpants manufactured in Bangladesh and China and bought through AS Colour, the report states.
Soon after the news surfaced, L’Estrange-Corbet said that the company has not misled customers by attaching “Made in New Zealand” tags to some garments manufactured off-shore. She defended that WORLD had made no attempt to conceal where the garments were made.
She said some garments were made in Bangladesh, despite the swing tags stating otherwise.
“I’ve never had anyone come back and say that they were misled by this in the seven years we have been doing this… I would have thought the New Zealand public was a bit smarter than that and could actually see the tag sewn into the garment which quite plainly states where it is made,” she was quoted as saying. She said most customers asked for the swing tag to be taken off at the point of sale.
This news comes at a time when Bangladesh’s apparel makers are crying out to the world, demanding for ethical pricing of their products which are made through cheapest labour costs in the world.