Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

American Giant was drowning in a river of digital praise.

Last December, Slate tech writer Farhad Manjoo published a story about the company’s signature product — a heavyweight hooded sweatshirt — calling it the “greatest hoodie ever made.” Orders flooded in — so many that American Giant couldn’t keep up with the demand.

As Christmas came and went, the orders kept rolling in, and the struggle to fill them continued. Unlike the massive multinationals making billions from fast fashion in sweatshops in Bangladesh, American Giant is selling an American-made ideal as much as a sweatshirt. It is making clothes you don’t wear for a season and shove to the back of your closet. It’s making durable, well-designed, good-looking sweatshirts you can wear for a decade and then pass down to your kid, the way American clothes used to be made — and they don’t cost much more than the disposable crap we’ve accepted as the standard for affordable apparel....