Have you ever when entering a fashionable youth clothes store and looking at the jeans there thought about the conditions these clothes have been made under?

The so-called ethical consumer may often meet the wall when seeking information about the clothes in stores. Last thursday a friend of mine and myself went to 5 different stores here in Bergen, Norway. The stores were:

H&M | Jack & Jones | Diesel | Vincci | Miss Sixty

We went into the stores, looking at the tabs in different jeans, stating that they were "Made in Italy", "Made in Tunisia" or "Made in China".

In H&M, the first store we went into, we first asked the girl working there "Do you know anything about how these pair of jeans were produced?" and she, almost annoyed, said "No". We then said "We come from Liberal Youths, and we have some further questions for you". She then immediately took up a phone and called her boss. The boss said something like "Don't answer them anything, I will be right there". The boss then came outside the store in the shopping centre and waved us to come out. It was obvious that she has been drilled on this situation. She had a brochure with her, dealing with H&M CSR record and how good they are. We told her that we had already been at the homepages dealing with CSR, and that we rather wanted to see how much the employees knew about this. We asked her what kind of training they gave their employees. She told us that every year there is a meeting/course where the employees are given information about the CSR issues and were given the brochure that we now were getting.

We had beforehand read the reports from Norwegian customer rights groups who had tested different clothes stores, and H&M was clearly the "winner" in their test, as in both being a part of the Global Compact, Amnesty Business Group, and so on. Furthermore, H&M had been very helpful with giving information to the people behind the test.

Conclusion: H&M is very afraid of negative PR, and they want to streamline their relations to media, interest groups and others. We were given the phone number to H&M's Norwegian Marketing Manager if we had further questions. But, when we asked if we could ask the employees in the store questions, she said that they unfortunately could not allow that. OK.

We then went to a store selling Diesel clothes. When asked if he knew where the clothes are produced, the poor guy said "Norway". He simply had no clue, but at least he willingly answered our friendly questions.

We went to a store selling Miss Sixty jeans. Miss Sixty has lately been getting a Lot of negative media last months because their jeans only fit almost-anorectic girls.. We looked at the Miss Sixty jeans there and they all had the "Made in Italy" tab. Tabloid-like as we were, we went on looking untill we found clothes (brand: Killah) produced in Tunisia. We then went and asked the girl working there if she knew where the clothes are produced. She said "Italy". We informed her about the jeans made in Tunisia and asked her whether she knew anything about the production methods for these jeans. Anything general like whether the factory followed the ILO rules or if there was children involved in the production. She was very friendly about it and had to admit that "Sorry, I do not know this, but I really hope that it is all produced in decent conditions". Next on our list was Vincci, a store in Bergen selling Prada pants for 450 US$, Boss, Gant, and other more expensive brands. We found a pair of Hugo Boss jeans that had no tab with "Made in" in them. We went to the guy asking if he knew where they were produced. He looked at us almost like we were from another planet, then said "I guess Italy" and then went looking in the Boss catalogue. No information there. While he looked in the brochure we asked if he could guarantee that no children had worked on the making of these jeans, and he said "These jeans are made in Italy, and there are no children working there". He then had to ask another employee there about the production country of these jeans, and she said "Germany". Fair enough, Boss is after all a German brand. But we still did not get the confirmed information.

Jack & Jones is a brand of Bestseller, a Danish clothes company selling several other brands. We went to two stores selling J&J. In one store the employee could not give us much information at all, in the other the guy we spoke with was the owner of that franchise and could give us some information, but not much in-depth. The jeans, however, he told us was made at a factory in Florence, Italy (which is one of my favorite cities, btw).

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We are currently preparing a campaign here in Norway where we will send out similar teams of two young people who will go out and "bug" the employees in clothes stores about these issues.

We are not socialists, and we are far from anti-globalisation-activists. But we are of course concerned about the social responsability we have as consumers. The responsability not to support the military regime in Burma, or to support companies that is treating their workers with slave-like conditions. We rejoice in capitalism and the spirit of the business entrepeneur, but enriching ourselves by Exploiting others is no way to go.

I will write an update later about our progress here in Norway, and what we have achieved in letting consumers know that they have a Right To Know, also if they dont have the time to call X amount of marketing managers and read heavy CSR-reports written by PR-consultants..