Read the reviews, you will see page after page of satisfied, happy customers. If the customers are thrilled with that they receive, thats the important thing right. They are the ones paying for it and if they love it, then everything works out in the end. And everyone always says, the pictures never do justice to the outfit
T*hey may not be doing the karigari or the stitching, but they are still doing a heck of alot. Designing the outfit, buying the fabrics, dying the fabrics, communicating with the karigar and darzi, running around from here to there, overseeing every little detail to make sure nothing gets messed up..etc. Its not an easy job and not everyone could manage that. Yes some people take advantage of their karigar and darzi and work them like a dog and then charge big bucks and pocket all the profit, but not everyone is like that. Homedesigners like Prototype have built quite a good reputation for themselves, off their own honesty and hard work, by consistently delivering high quality products, at decent prices*
But this is my point. Even in this situation, they are not picking the best quality in things. They do this to keep their costs low and profit margins high.
If kaarigars had more education, and therefore had more business sense, they would just do the direct work and sell directly to the consumer abroad through online businesses. The Pakistani gov't does nothing to encourage this growth, and so you have rich homemaker-turned businesswomen in Pakistan playing middlemen and reaping most of the profits. They pay the Kaarigars a pittance of what they earn on each outfit.
And yeah they are running around, but keep in mind, they don't do separate trips for each outfit. They are making these clothes in mass bulk, so you are basically paying them to go shopping, which they would have been doing anyway.
Quite honestly, these home-made businesswomen have it pretty lucky. I'd say their biggest risk is just working in Pakistan, that you never know when a bomb is going to go off somewhere, but I guess everyone is having to deal with that in Pakistan these days.
I'm sorry, I went to some boutiques in Chicago on Devon street with beautiful designs. But the cloth was CRAP. Visibly cheap. The stitching on the suits was done poorly - and you could tell they paid to get the cheapest job done. A seam should be without wrinkles and shouldn't tug. But you see Pakistani made dresses and compare them to Indian manufactured dresses and asmaan-zameen difference.
Speaking of Indian dresses, don't know if you've noticed, but there are shops in Karachi which sell just Indian mass-manufactured shalwaar kameez's. Their workmanship is neat, the seams are neat, and the cloth quality isn't sheer crap. And reasonably priced compared to local Pakistani clothes.
Comon, there can be MASSIVE improvement in quality, and I don't mind paying 300 dollars for a jazzed up outfit - but it better be on the best silk, and it better be FIT perfectly, it better not be tugging at the seams, and the embroidery better not look like some 3rd grader did it.