The Philippine Apparel Industry
Since the 1980s, the trend of the Philippine garment industry has slowly shifted from the commercial apparel establishments to the surplus garment industry now popularly known as “ukay-ukay”. “Ukay-ukay” is a Cebuano word that literally means “to sift through” referring to the act of digging into a pile of used clothes and sorting out what is still valuable or usable. The birth of the “ukay-ukay” started out with clothing sent in from other countries as donations to less fortunate communities in the third world countries. The recipients of these goods were usually the non-government organisations; so the government allows large volume of used clothing to enter the country without tariff. Another story of the “ukay-ukay” tells of overseas Filipino workers collecting used clothing with designer labels and sending out the garments to relatives in the Philippines, who took the opportunity of selling out the clothes to the public.
The low shipment costs and absence of tariff on these used apparel enabled the vendors to sell the “ukay-ukay” at the lowest possible prices. In the earlier years of its trade, the “ukay-ukay” only appealed to the lower end of the market as surplus clothing was associated to poor class. However, as it has become more of the current society’s craze, the “ukay-ukay” fascinated the wealthier segment of the whole population. Even with the availability of commercial apparel stores in department stores and malls, most of the Filipinos still end up digging through heaps of dusty, used clothing, expecting to find valuable designer brands within the pile. Indeed, “ukay-ukay” has infected almost every adventurous Filipino bargain hunter. It has been proven that “ukay-ukay” is not just a fad; it is a part of the Filipino’s way of life.
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