Underneath the glitz and gloss of Los Angeles, the heart of ...

[ M ADE IN AMERICA ]
CITY OF
ANGELS
&
APPAREL
Underneath the glitz and gloss of Los Angeles,
the heart of American apparel manufacturing still
beats strong.
BY CHRISTOPHER RUVO
PHOTOGRAPY BY SUZANNE MAPES
I
f apparel manufacturing in the United
States is supposed to be dead, someone forgot
to tell American Apparel (asi/35297).
In a coral pink industrial facility that rises
with rude ebullience in downtown Los Angeles’
gritty warehouse district, the casual style
leader is effecting what a banner blazoned
across the building proclaims is a one-company
industrial revolution. Perhaps that’s
going a bit far, but visitors can’t help but be
impressed by the bustle and thrum that permeates
every corner of the supplier’s labyrinthine
headquarters. The company’s vertically
integrated production model – from fabric
development to finished product – spans seven
lively floors, where a legion of employees cut,
sew and ship the trendy tops and sleek slacks
worn by everyone from the counter-culture
chic to Air Force recruits.
All the activity speaks to a surging vitality
at American Apparel. Despite highly-publicized
problems in recent years, including the
specter of bankruptcy after an $86 million
loss in 2010, the advertising specialty industry’s
16th largest supplier has roared forward
in 2012, posting first and second quarter
net sales gains of 14% and 13%, which
include rises of 17% and 10% in wholesale
business. While the supplier’s unmistakable
brand panache has helped keep its 4,000-
plus downtown L.A. employees busy, the fact
that its clothes are domestically produced has
been a factor in spurring stronger sales on the
$90.2 million wholesale side of the business.
“More customers are coming to us asking
about Made-in-the-USA,” says Ray Hughes,
director of distributor relations. “The recession
caused a rude awakening. The country
was shaken to its core. People want to support
American jobs. They think it’s the right
thing to do.”
American Apparel’s growing wholesale business
and Hughes’ anecdotal account testify to
what Wearables’ new 2012 sales forecast shows:
An increasing number of buyers want to purchase
apparel made in the United States. About 65%
of respondents to the Wearables survey reported
that they’d worked with clients that specifically
requested Made-in-the-USA threads. An
in-house survey administered by New Balance
(which produces a quarter of its shoes in the
U.S.) found 69% of Americans would be willing
to pay extra for Made-in-USA goods.
The undeniable trending interest in Madein-the-USA
is fantastic news not only for
American Apparel, but the cluster of apparelmakers
that also produce their clothes in the
50 OCTOBER 2012 WEARABLES • wearablesmag.com

L.A. area and sell into the ad specialty market.
These manufacturers are tapping into the
unique apparel production strength of their
region to capitalize on the growing demand for
domestic goods. Los Angeles started to incorporate
garment manufacturing before World
War II, and reached its peak employment in the
mid-’90s. So while the City of Angels is diminished
from its heyday as the knitwear capital of
the country, it remains home to a vast, synergistic
network of talent and businesses that make
efficient production of quality apparel possible.
Powered by a bevy of designers and skilled
laborers, fabric suppliers and trimmers, dye
houses and sewing contractors, the Los Angeles
area’s $13 billion apparel industry includes
10,000 firms and about 50,000 clothing manufacturing
jobs. “L.A. style is casual and lowkey,
but our manufacturing muscle is anything
but,” says Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. “We are
poised for growth.”
Speed and quality
That growth is well underway no matter where
you look – including the industrial neighborhood
of Vernon, just outside downtown L.A.
and a couple of miles from 9th Avenue’s bazaarlike
tangle of teeming fabric shops. Inside a
faded blue building that houses Expert Performance
T (asi/53404), President Sion Shaman
and his management team have spearheaded
mostly double-digit sales gains for six years
straight. Revenue has shot up in 2012, with
year-to-date business increasing 40% over
2011 at the performance wear maker, which
manufactures about 70% of its garments at
facilities in the greater Los Angeles area.
Escalating buyer interest in stateside-produced
apparel has fueled, in part, the company’s
bolstered bottom line. Shaman says
this appetite for domestic threads is about
more than customers wanting to support the
U.S. economy. Just as importantly, they desire
a stellar product delivered fast – achievable
thanks to quick turn times that offshore factories
often can’t achieve. “Retailers and distributors
are more reluctant to carry inventory,
and with that and the constant change in
“L.A. style is casual
and low-key, but our
manufacturing muscle
is anything but. We are
poised for growth.”
Antonio Villaraigosa,
Mayor of Los Angeles
trends, they need to answer market demand
much quicker,” he says. Because Expert stocks
half a million yards of fabric and controls production,
it can fulfill the need for speed. On
average, even larger orders – say 10,000 or
more pieces – are out the door in three or so
weeks. “We can do in a few weeks what overseas
would take 90 to 120 days,” says Shaman.
By controlling cutting and sewing, suppliers
can prioritize jobs to meet customer
demands. Not long ago, with a deadline of
five days, American Apparel delivered 30,000
of a specific T-shirt for the Air Force Reserve
as part of a Kid Rock concert. Blanks Plus
(asi/40642), situated a half mile down Alameda
Street from American Apparel, recently
made and shipped 2,500 skorts in four days,
meeting the deadline of a client that had been
a week and a half late getting Blanks a purchase
order. “We ship anywhere in the U.S. in
five to 10 days,” says Account Manager Abby
de Joya. “Speed and quality are what set us
apart from overseas suppliers.”
As de Joya suggests, delivering a distinctive,
quality product is paramount for domestic
manufacturers. After all, higher labor costs
mean U.S.-made apparel is pricier, without the
quantity price breaks that offshore factories offer
(since American labor wages can’t be manipulated).
In addition to fast turn times, L.A. manufacturers
aim to justify the higher price by providing
superior garments. Blanks Plus’ skilled
and efficient team of cutters and sewers creates
fashion-forward pieces – like women’s dolmansleeve
scoop-neck tunics – from Eco-Hybrid, a
synthetic-free fabric that blends cotton with the
softness and 100% biodegradability of Modal,
which is made from beech trees.
At Expert, quality comes in the form of
inherent moisture-management built into its
100% microfiber oXymesh shirts. The wicking
property lasts the life of the garments,
which are treated to inhibit growth of odorcausing
bacteria. “The U.S. is a leader in
research, development and, in many cases,
manufacturing of fibers, yarns and fabrics so
we can offer better quality,” says Shaman.
In fact, a premier provider of performance
wear fabric is located in downtown
Los Angeles, which is advantageous for
RaceReady (asi/74894). “We get easy access
to some of the best resources the industry has
to offer,” says company President Tim Vadney.
Headquartered in Torrance, only a half
hour (traffic-less) drive south on the I-110
from downtown, RaceReady manufactures
L.A. BY
THE NUMBERS
$13 billion
worth of L.A. apparel industry
10,000
apparel firms in the city
50,000
clothing manufacturing jobs
14
fashion schools in the city
#1
the rank of Port of Los Angeles as the
busiest port in America
40%
of goods imported into the U.S. come
through L.A.
37
nationalities which have their largest U.S.
population in L.A.
wearablesmag.com • WEARABLES OCTOBER 2012 51

[ M ADE IN AMERICA ]
Efficiency is essential to consistently achieving expeditious turnaround times that give domestic apparel manufacturers an edge. At American Apparel (asi/35297), employees work in
teams to help maximize production flow.
technical running apparel from the highestquality
performance fabrics, like ReadyTech
Aries, Dryline and MicroMove. Focused on
innovation and creativity, RaceReady delivers
value buyers can’t find elsewhere by holding
patents on its men’s and women’s running
shorts with pockets – a practical solution for
carrying energy bars and the like on long-distance
runs. “We may lose on price, but we’ll
always win on value,” Vadney says.
Knowing they must continue to justify the
higher prices of their wares, domestic apparel
producers focus intensely on quality control
– a task made much easier when cut-and-sew
operations are in your own building or closeby.
For example, when a novice sewer was
stitching pockets that were too large onto running
shorts, RaceReady personnel caught the
mistake after only about 60 pairs were sewn.
A similar occurrence with overseas manufacturers,
Vadney says, would not have been discovered
until after the clothes arrive, causing
thousands of garments to be scrapped. “We
have people going from the office to the factory
and back daily,” says Vadney. “It helps us
maintain that level of control that ensures a
good product.”
Ken Cheng knows exactly what Vadney
means. Fed up with unpredictable delivery,
inconsistent product quality and rising prices
from Chinese factories, the owner of Akwa
(asi/33280) decided to reshore manufacturing
about three years ago to gain greater control
over his apparel. Only about 20 miles outside
of downtown L.A. in City of Industry, Akwa
produces between 80% and 90% of its line
in the Los Angeles area. “If we find a problem,
we can stop it right there and fix it,” says
Cheng, who first offshored around the year
2000, having previously produced at a SoCal
factory he owned. “In China, we’d be reliant
on the overseas vendor and problems slip by.”
“More customers are
coming to us asking
about Made-in-the-USA.
The recession caused
a rude awakening. The
country was shaken to
its core. People want to
support American jobs.
They think it’s the right
thing to do.”
Ray Hughes,
American Apparel (asi/35297)
52 OCTOBER 2012 WEARABLES • wearablesmag.com

In Los Angeles county, the average annual wage for apparel manufacturing workers in 2011 was $34,008, while textile mill employees earned $32,240. Respectively, those wages were
21.3% and 15.5% greater than the 2006 averages.
Another way domestic manufacturers
remain vital is by fulfilling smaller-volume
custom orders that wouldn’t meet the minimums
required by overseas factories. While
Tutti Bowling Wear’s (asi/92356) bread-andbutter
business centers on staying amply
stocked with its extensive line of bowling
shirts so it can same-day ship, the Los Angeles
manufacturer also deals in the custom business,
setting no minimums when it comes to
creating one-of-a-kind bowling tops. Endusers
of Tutti’s unique shirts – stitched on
the sixth floor of a downtown building a few
doors down from the famous Orpheum Theatre
– include everyone from Justin Bieber to
an automotive industry company that wanted
custom tops for a trade show.
All the hard work is bearing fruit. For the first
six months of 2012, business at RaceReady was
up 37% over the same period the year before
(thanks to both domestic demand and the company’s
entry in the ad specialty market). While
Blanks Plus lost about 75% of its business in
2007 and 2008 as a result of clients choosing
to go offshore, about 20% of those prodigal
customers have returned since 2011, drawn
back by the benefits offered by the manufacturer’s
domestic production model, says de Joya.
“Every day we’re getting more calls from people
who say, ‘Are you 100% American-made’ ”
she says. “I think it’s going to keep increasing.”
Powered by people
When Jose Olivos’ wife showed him the flyer
about the job opening, he decided to apply. It
was grunt work in shipping and receiving, but
that didn’t matter; Olivos was eager for the
position. “I thought it was a small company,
but then I saw how big it is,” says Olivos. The
company was American Apparel. And within
a month, the high-performing Olivos was in
a supervisory position, a role he has grown in
over the last five years. “I’m making a decent
living,” says the family man, originally from
Mexico, during a break from his busy day. “I
can afford my little luxuries.”
Olivos represents what sometimes gets lost
in industrial verbiage and macro-analytic discussions
about stateside manufacturing: He’s
the human face of the industry, one of the tens
of thousands of hardworking people powering
apparel production in the greater Los Angeles
area. It’s these people who create and efficiently
ship the garments that company presidents
brag about. It’s their jobs that are at stake
when buyers opt for the cheaper offshore item
over one with a Made-in-the-USA label. And
it’s these workers – and the sizable contingent
of unemployed workers in this country – who
can benefit if the trend toward buying American
holds steady or increases. “I just thank
God I have a job,” says Irma Perez, a patternmaker
originally from Mexico who landed a
wearablesmag.com • WEARABLES OCTOBER 2012 53

[ M ADE IN AMERICA ]
The majority (about two-thirds) of apparel production workers in the Los Angeles area are women. The workforce is dominated by immigrants of Hispanic and Asian ethnicities.
position at Blanks Plus after tough economic
times caused her to lose her previous apparel
job at another firm. “I enjoy my job because I
can do it fast and right. And I like my boss. He
doesn’t push us. We push ourselves.”
By and large, the harrowing examples of
worker exploitation – poor working conditions,
wage manipulation – that once besmirched the
L.A. industry are relegated to the past, according
to a 2011 report compiled by CIT Trade
Finance for the California Fashion Association.
“The L.A. apparel industry of today has
greatly improved working conditions from the
apparel industry of 10 years ago,” the report
says. “Stringent self and government monitoring
help ensure that ‘exploitation’ occurs
very rarely.” Some apparel companies even go
the extra mile for their employees. American
Apparel has been a leader in this regard, offering
everything from an on-site medical clinic
to company-subsidized lunches, public transport
and health insurance, as well as free onpremise
massages.
Still, even if you were looking through the
rosiest glasses, you couldn’t call the apparel
production trade easy. It’s labor-intensive. It’s
hot. It’s fast-paced. There’s the crunch of constant
deadlines. And while the annual wages
for textile mill and apparel manufacturing
workers in Los Angeles County rose 15.5%
and 21.3%, respectively, between 2006 and
2011, they certainly aren’t getting rich from
the work. Last year, textile mill employees
made $32,240 on average, while apparel manufacturing
employees earned $34,008, according
to the Los Angeles County Economic
Development Corporation.
Nonetheless, the apparel production industry
provides employment and the door to a
better life for its predominantly female immigrant
workforce, which in the Los Angeles
area is about 80% Hispanic and 16% Asian.
Among the ranks of dedicated workers,
there are many unheralded personal success
stories, like that of Roxanna Alvarez. Originally
from El Salvador, Alvarez immigrated
to Southern California when she was nine and
later began working in shipping and receiving
in the clothing industry. An outgoing
go-getter with a knack for organization, she
eventually moved into the administrative side
of the business. Despite a difficult unemployment
stint imposed by a bad economy, Alvarez
earned a sales and customer service position
at Expert Performance T, a job she likes and
was well-prepared for by nearly two decades
of industry experience. Dressed casually as she
sits in a comfortable, air-conditioned office at
Expert, she doesn’t hesitate when asked what
she thinks of domestic apparel manufacturing:
54 OCTOBER 2012 WEARABLES • wearablesmag.com

“It gives people opportunity.”
Made in L.A.’s future
Will that opportunity continue The forecast is mixed.
High-volume apparel production is unlikely to return to Los Angeles
or elsewhere in the United States. According to an August 2011
study by the Boston Consulting Group, while modest-volume, laborlight
products are poised for a renaissance in America over the next five
years, domestic production of mass-made, labor-intensive goods (like
clothing) still faces hurdles to growth.
The bottom line Employment in apparel manufacturing and textile
mills in the Los Angeles area isn’t going to rebound to its 1990s level,
which was roughly cut in half over the last 15 years. “In the last two years,
manufacturing here has been building up again,” says Shaman, “but it’s
not nearly as big as what it used to be. It’s not going to go back to that.”
Nonetheless, there is cause for optimism. Along with the revenue
gains of Expert and other L.A.-area manufacturers who sell to ad specialty
distributors, the California Fashion Association reports that the
Los Angeles apparel industry as a whole has carved a niche in the
marketplace by providing low-volume, high-fashion clothing that has
short concept-to-product time. While apparel industry employment
has fallen across the United States, the share of employment captured
by the L.A. area has increased. Consider, too, that clothing manufacturing
alone was a $5 billion business in Los Angeles County in 2010.
To improve upon that impressive figure and build the industry, politicians
and business leaders are wielding their might. Villaraigosa’s
Office of Economic and Business Policy recently partnered with the
Los Angeles Regional Export Council to research and compile the
first-ever online comprehensive resource guide of apparel industry
suppliers and manufacturers in L.A. The tool will serve as a roadmap
to Los Angeles’ apparel industry, with the aim of driving more business
to local contractors and ultimately creating more jobs. The partnership
was announced in August at MAGIC, a Las Vegas trade show for the
fashion industry where a “Made-in-L.A.” pavilion was on display to call
attention to the city’s apparel firms.
Combine all that with the fact that more buyers are looking for
Made-in-the-USA threads, and many Los Angeles manufacturers feel
they’re in a strong position. “We can make quality products at a competitive
price and get them to customers quickly,” says Shaman. “That
business is going to grow.”
That’s good news for the employees of Tarvio Sportswear, who cut
and sew for Expert and are neatly stacking white performance wear
T-shirts by the dozen on a summer afternoon in Los Angeles county.
It’s good news for the American Apparel workers grouped into garment
construction teams, stitching T-shirts and wovens as industrial
fans whirl like old plane propellers in sun-baked windows. Good news,
of course, for the savvy suppliers working in their industrial headquarters,
not far from the shadow of the iconic Hollywood sign.
At the end of the day, it’s good news for America.
Christopher Ruvo is a staff writer for Wearables.
HUB OF ACTIVITY
Los Angeles isn’t the only area of the U.S. that has its
fingers in apparel production. Here are other areas that are
deeply entrenched.
New York City
With its condensed cluster of apparel factories and fabric suppliers,
Manhattan’s hard-hit but still-vibrant Garment Center helps power
the world-famous fashion industry in the city, which is home to 846
fashion companies – more than London, Paris and Milan combined.
Texas
The Lone Star State is home to America’s greatest reserve of cotton,
producing a total of 6.2 million bales of cotton for the years 2006
through 2008, helping to make the U.S. the third largest cotton
grower in the world.
North Carolina
The Southeast remains the primary home of textile production in the
U.S., with 4,400 employees working in textile and apparel firms in the
Tar Heel state.
wearablesmag.com • WEARABLES OCTOBER 2012 55