Comment by danpalmer

No no, it's the skills. My colleague worked for a very high priced fashion brand who were able to pay high rates (and indeed did for this and other parts), but they couldn't get the quality they needed.

At the low end, sure, it's obvious you'll get more for your money abroad. The point here is that the skills are lost and you can't pay any amount anymore, at least not at scale (there will always be artisans who can produce extremely low volumes but these don't affect the market much).