While we are experiencing up to 95 per cent of our fashion production being made overseas, there is a small five per cent niche of fashion designed and made on our continent.
Most say this move offshore is due to the tarrif protection on TCF items, being lowered more and more by our Federal Government since the 1970's.
Yet every year in Melbourne, our seven tertiary fashion schools release approximately 2500 graduates. Now with the advent of "production agencies" in Melbourne, graduates are not always needed.
It's product development now, not design, and even product development can all be done offshore. No designers needed, thank you. Yet every year new designers appear with a collection.
These are the students who want to make their designs into a collection and sell it to a handful of trendy boutiques. Due to the erratic cash flow in a fashion business, these young ones are forced to find free rent in their family's rumpus room or garage.
Added to this is the stigma of working from home, not been taken seriously by the remaining factories here over such small work quantities and not being able to source legitimate sample machinists.
Some of these fledglings can not make a pattern or sew a sample themselves, so their costs are going to be even greater, when and if they find the right freelancers needed.
Costing the garments is even more frightning. If you price too high, you may never sell the range. Working on what the market can bear, most boutique buyers are now choosing product that is $30 less per item, made offshore.
I am hearing this every season. And I am hearing the designers too, they say that to "get into the market and get Branded". This their first step, knowing in most cases there will be no financial return for some years.
So you see them working 9to5 for someone else, to fund their label. Don't you think it's time for the Federal Government, the educational bodies and the Industry to have a BIG TALK??