Lidl is selling a sweater considered a luxurious luxury garment at a record low price.
Lidl sells cashmere sweaters in black, gray and beige. Adobe Stock/AOP and Lidl
Cashmere knitwear is considered valuable luxury clothing, the prices of which usually hover around several hundred euros.
Now Lidl has put a full cashmere sweater on sale, which only costs about 50 euros. You can get the cheapest full cashmere sweaters for a hundred bucks from, for example, the H&M clothing chain.
The question arises, how can you get a cashmere sweater so exceptionally cheap.
– We are part of Europe’s largest retail chain, which is why the order volumes for our own brand products are massive. Lidl has stores in 30 countries, and thanks to, among other things, large order volumes, a lower price can be obtained for the product, Johanna Liukkonen Tells about Lidl’s communication.
According to Liukkonen, the price of the product is affected in many stages.
– For example, we always develop all processes of goods management, logistics and stores, not only from the point of view of customer service and product safety, but also from the point of view of operational efficiency. Our efficient operating method helps us keep costs under control, which is naturally reflected in the selling prices of the products.
It’s not the first time that Lidl has sold cashmere products. According to Liukkonen, the products in question are popular among customers.
– Sales of cashmere knitwear have also started well now. On the first day of sales, Thursday afternoon, 25 percent of the products have already been sold.
According to Liukkonen, Lidl’s cashmere sweaters have the Öko-tex and Hohenstein labels. Öko-tex indicates that the product is free of harmful substances, and the Hohenstein mark means that the uniformity of the size of the garment has been ensured by testing the garment when new and after washing in accordance with the care instructions.
Can you get good for cheap?
Nonfiction writer Rinna Saramäki has not seen the cashmere sweater in question, so he talks about the subject in a general way.
– It’s really cheap for cashmere. The price of pure cashmere fiber has been between one hundred and one hundred and fifty dollars per kilo. On top of that, there is spinning into yarn, dyeing, knitting, transportation and so on.
According to Saramäki, there are a few differences between the cheaper and more expensive Kashmir. More expensive cashmere has longer fibers and is thinner, which means it feels softer than cheaper cashmere, and it doesn’t really pucker.
– Kashmir’s strength is not its selling point. In other words, you shouldn’t pull cashmere knitwear with a hard and rough bag strap or something similar.
Finer and thus more expensive cashmere is obtained from younger goats, cashmere from old goats is coarser and cheaper.
– Rough here is relative. Even the cheaper cashmere doesn’t actually scratch the skin. It is also warm and light like more expensive ones. If you just manage to remove the knots for a while, eventually the knotting will decrease, unlike, for example, worse synthetic fiber-wool blends.
In general, according to Saramäki, it would be better to buy the best quality sweater from the affordable category than the cheapest sweater from the expensive category – then you are most likely to get value for your money.
– But since I haven’t been able to evaluate this sweater with my own eyes and fingers, I can’t say whether this sweater is an exception to this rule.