one strategy would be to go upscale, more services, more advertising. but you can always choose to just markup by $20 but otherwise behave exactly the same as you would with the $25 shirt from abroad. without the multiplicative markup, there’s little added security spend. 1/

conceivably the $20 markup is such a competitive disadvantage (even after the gain you get from “made in usa” branding that you *have* to go into a completely different cost and service tier to sell the shirt. 2/

but it’s also quite conceivable that made-in-usa branding well deloyed can cover the primary cost differential, and the shirts could be sold with no additional expenses required, or even fewer marketing expenses. 3/

maybe the multiplicative rule-of-thumb happens to summarize an empirical invariant, and trying to deviate from the upscale business model never works. but it’s not at all obvious that would be so, it’s a conjecture that would demand some evidence. /fin