End of Hong Kong mail-order trade

Press, 29 December 1979, Page 4

End of Hong Kong mail-order trade

t.’ZPA Hong Kong The new decade is likelv to bring the demise of a Hong Kong export trade which through the 1950 s and '6os frequently became a useful source of cheap, quality clothing for New Zealand homes — the mail-order business. Since about 1975 the trade has fallen into a decline and the colony's mail-order companies now say that rising prices, high rents, and labour shortages have combined to cut their competitive edge. In the ’sos and *fiOs New Zealand families often accumulated sufficient postal orders to send off for windbreakers car-coats, and children’s clothine available on order from Hong Kong tailors. Catalogues of available styles, colours, and prices were kept in New Zealand homes, to be pondered when autumn winds suggested the time had come to stock up on winter clothing. Made-to-measure suits were another sector of the trade popular with New Zealanders. Visitors to the

■colony proclaimed the virtues i[of a "24-hour" Hong Kong- : made suit, sometimes not up i to par with Savile Row in style and stitching but a good buy at the low prices charged. The trade grew into a S7O million-a-year business. More than 200 Hong Kong companies shared in the I boom. using cheap and skilled labour willing to work round the clock at machines • in back-street premises. The sight of elderly women working at a sewing machine, their faces lined with the strain of concentration under a single dim light in a pokv street-sid r * shop. became ! commonplace to tourists, a part of travel folklore. Tailors and cutters drew a pittance from merchant middlemen, who, as trade expanded. sent salesmen to EuI rope, the United States. New Zealand, and Australia to take in orders for the boom--1 ing mail-order business based on sweated labour. Now. however, the gloss of high profits has gone. Massproduction factories, paving good wages bv local stan-

dards, have absorbed the cheap labour supply. High rents have forced hundreds of small tailoring establishments geared to the mailorder industry out of business. The housewives who could be recruited for piecework find better wages available for part-time work at electronics, textile, and plastics factories. Not only has the shift of labour caused wage problems for the industry. It has led to a decline in quality because less skilled workers are available for cutting and sewing. These days Hong Kong suits are no longer the bargain of previous years. Quality is closely related to willingness to pay. Officials of the Mail-order Association of Hong Kong Isay they would not advise people to get into the business today. It is heading for a decline and within five years may be little more than a skeleton of the boom years of the late 1960 s and early 19705.