Reshoring

Bring the 'rag trade' home.

If you use the term 'reshoring', most people won't know what you're talking about, but it's basically the opposite of offshoring, where manufacturing that has been outsourced to places like China, Vietnam, Bangladesh and India, begin to reappear closer to home. There are several reasons why this is not a populist move but a progressive one.

It reduces the length of supply chains, and although it increases the cost, it also increases the value. It reduces the effects of a disposable economy (fast fashion and race to the bottom style junk manufacturing). It gives businesses more flexibility and limits the amount of unsold stock that is sold off for almost nothing or even destroyed, which is what happens when you're ordering a year in advance and the market changes. It allows products to be more rapidly adapted to market needs, rather than designers coming up with products that are state of the art when pen and paper meet, but stale by the time the shipping container lands at the docks, t…