Quote Originally Posted by RockyR View Post
What about the following ones you missed:

1. Customs Duties (if you're a US or Canadian maker who orders material from the UK) which generally don't get charged to the customer
Same applies to most textiles. All of the other enumerated costs too are standard to pretty much any retailer.

The truth of the matter "Why do kilts cost what they do" is that the price is what the market can accept and what sellers can make a profit from. The price of the cloth is what is the market can accept and those mills that could not rationalize and adapt their production to meet the demands of the market have since shut their doors. Today's kilts and jackets are not made to the same standards of previous generations but too are more rational in their use of labour. Highland jackets are more or less nearly all made using automation and even the "bespoke" jackets from the best tailors in Scotland and most of the Saville Road use short-cuts, machines and other means that would have been considered unacceptable by premiere master tailors of previous generations. What sells today on the Road is fine cloth and not invisible but expensive workmanship. People today are sold on silly little comparatively low labour features such as bright and quirky coloured linings (the rage among City bankers), buttons with holes on the cuff--- a , in general, silly feature that most master tailors would not have bothered with--- and a number of idiosyncracies that are demanded as visible traits to distinguish the one jacket against another.
Things are, on the whole, cheaper today because they must be cheaper because the market is not willing to pay more. This applies not just to textiles but to pretty much the entire consumer market. Mix now willingness to pay with ability to pay (or invest) and one sees the cause of the collapse of the Scottish textiles industry.