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.
I am confused. You have a first hand experience with LOOKING at 'low quality' outfits at local shops and you are generalizing your experience (which I doubt you have any yet - atleast here) with any home-based designer on this forum ? wow ! And without seeing any of the products in person, just based on the rate-list you know of from your last visit to pakistan atleast 5 yrs back, you cannot say anyone is keeping their cost low and margins high. no one is ignorant of all the prices and fabric quality to keep on paying for rubbish and neither is anyone insisting the customers to buy their stuff in any case.
It is so funny that you think that karigars are charging a 'pittance' here. For any business of this type, people have two options: either hiring a place and making karigars do all the embroidery,etc there, paying them on monthly basis,even if the karigars make one or ten outfit per month (not to mention their smoking,residing,mess and other expenditures PLUS providing them with every single thread and tools that will be used for the embellish work,etc AND uninformed absence for days because someone in their family died for 15th time and other numerous excuses they can make and you can do nothing about them ) OR paying the karigars per piece basis (like I and many other home based designers do) and paying them whatever they want.
anyways, there is no point in explaining anything unless it is made clear whether it is homebased designers or big shot designers or the local boutiques you are talking about:)