NEW YORK — You can recycle your waste, grow your own food and drive a fuel-efficient car. But being socially responsible isn’t so easy when it comes to the clothes on your back.
Jason and Alexandra Lawrence of Lyons, Colo., eat locally grown food and fill up their diesel-powered Volkswagen and Dodge pickup with vegetable-based oil. They even take silverware to a nearby coffeehouse to avoid using the shop’s plastic utensils.
But when it comes to making sure that their clothes are made in factories that are safe for workers, they fall short.
“Clothing is one of our more challenging practices,” said Jason Lawrence, 35, who mostly buys secondhand. “I don’t want to travel around the world to see where my pants come from.”
Last month’s clothing factory building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than a thousand people put a spotlight on the sobering fact that people in poor countries often risk their lives working in unsafe factories to make the clothes Westerners covet.
The disaster, which occurred after a fire in another Bangladesh factory killed 112 people in November, highlights something just as troubling for socially conscious shoppers: It’s nearly impossible to make sure that the clothes you buy come from factories with safe working conditions.
Very few companies sell clothing that’s “ethically made,” or marketed as being made in factories that maintain safe working conditions. Ethically made clothes make up a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the $1 trillion global fashion industry. And with a few exceptions, such as the 250-store clothing chain American Apparel Inc., most aren’t national brands.
Major chains typically use a complex web of suppliers that contract business to other factories. That means the retailers themselves don’t always know the origin of clothes when they’re made overseas.
Even a “Made in USA” label provides only a small amount of assurance: The tailors who assembled a skirt may have good working conditions, but the fabric may have been woven overseas in an unsafe environment.
“For U.S.-made labels, you have good assurance, but the farther you get away from the U.S., the less confidence you have,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy.
Policing isn’t easy
Most global retailers have standards for workplace safety in the factories that make their clothes. And the companies typically require contractors and subcontractors to follow the guidelines. But policing factories around the world is a costly, time-consuming process that’s difficult to manage.
There were five factories in the building that collapsed April 24 in Bangladesh. They produced clothing for retailers including Children’s Place and the Canadian company Loblaw Inc., which markets the Joe Fresh clothing line.
“I have seen factories [in Bangladesh and other countries], and I know how difficult it is to monitor the factories to see they are safe,” said Walter Loeb, a New York-based retail consultant.
And some experts say that retailers have little incentive to do more because the public isn’t pushing them to.
America’s Research Group, which interviews 10,000 to 15,000 consumers a week, mostly on behalf of retailers, says shoppers seem more concerned about fit and price than worker safety or low wages.
C. Britt Beemer, chairman of the firm, said shoppers rarely mention “where something is made” or “abuses” in the factories in other countries.
“We have seen no consumer reaction to any charges about harmful working conditions,” he said.
Tom Burson, 49, said that if someone tells him a brand of jeans is made in “sweatshops by 8-year-olds,” he won’t buy it. But overall, there is no practical way for him to trace where his pants were made.
“I am looking for value,” said Burson, a management consultant who lives in Ashburn, Va. “I am not callous and not unconcerned about the conditions of the workers. It’s just that when I am standing in a clothing store and am comparing two pairs of pants, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
New awareness
Some experts and retailers say things are slowly changing.
Swati Argade, a clothing designer who promotes her Bhoomki boutique in the Brooklyn borough of New York as “ethically fashioned,” says people have been more conscious about where their clothes come from.
The store, which means “of the earth” in Hindi, sells everything from $18 organic cotton underwear to $1,000 coats that are primarily made in factories in India or Peru that are owned by their workers or that are designed by local designers in New York.
“After the November fire in Bangladesh, many customers say it made them more aware of the things they buy and who makes them,” Argade said.
Jennifer Galatioto, a 31-year-old fashion photographer from Brooklyn, has become thoughtful about where her clothes are made. “I am trying to learn the story behind the clothing and the people who are making it,” she said.
Some retailers are beginning to do more to ease shoppers’ consciences.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, said in January that it would cut ties with any factory that failed an inspection, instead of giving warnings first as had been its practice. The Gap Inc., which owns the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains, hired a fire inspector to oversee factories that make its clothing in Bangladesh.
Still, Wal-Mart, Gap and many other global retailers continue to back off from a union-sponsored proposal to improve safety throughout Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry. As part of the legally binding agreement, retailers would be liable when there’s a factory fire and would have to pay factory owners more to make repairs.
Fair Trade U.S.A., a nonprofit founded in 1998 to audit products to make sure workers overseas are paid fair wages and work in safe conditions, is hoping to appeal to shoppers who care about where their clothing is made. In 2010, it expanded the list of products that it certifies beyond coffee, sugar and spices to include clothing.
The organization, known for its black, green and white label with an image of a person holding a bowl in front of a globe, said it’s working with small businesses such as PrAna, which sells yoga pants and other sportswear items to merchants like REI and Zappos.
To use the Fair Trade label on their products, companies have to follow a set of safety and wage standards.
5% more expensive
Still, less than 1 percent of clothing sold in the U.S. is stamped with a Fair Trade label. And shoppers will find that Fair Trade-certified clothing is typically about 5 percent more expensive than similar items that don’t have the label.
Fair Indigo is an online retailer that sells clothes and accessories that are certified by Fair Trade U.S.A., including $59.90 pima organic cotton dresses, $45.90 faux wrap skirts and $100 floral ballet flats. It generates annual
sales of just under $10 million.
The company’s catalog and website feature some of the garment workers in countries including Peru. “We are connecting consumers with the garment workers on a personal level,” said Rob Behnke, Fair Indigo’s co-founder and president. “We are showing that the garment workers are just like you and me.”
Los Angeles-based American Apparel, which says it knits, dyes, cuts and sews all of its products in-house in California, touts on its website that the working conditions are “sweatshop free.”
In an interview in November, the company’s founder and CEO, Dov Charney, said companies can control working conditions but they need to bring the production to the U.S.
“When the company knows the face of its worker, that’s important,” Charney said.
Behind Cry for Help From China Labor Camp
in Uncategorized“Sir: If you occasionally buy this product, please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right Organization,” said the note, which was tucked between two ersatz tombstones and fell out when the woman, Julie Keith, opened the box in her living room last October. “Thousands people here who are under the persicution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever.”
The letter drew international news media coverage and widespread attention to China’s opaque system of “re-education through labor,” a collection of penal colonies where petty criminals, religious offenders and critics of the government can be given up to four-year sentences by the police without trial.
But the letter writer remained a mystery, the subject of speculation over whether he or she was a real inmate or a creative activist simply trying to draw attention to the issue.
Last month, though, during an interview to discuss China’s labor camps, a 47-year-old former inmate at the Masanjia camp said he was the letter’s author. The man, a Beijing resident and adherent of Falun Gong, the outlawed spiritual practice, said it was one of 20 such letters he secretly wrote over the course of two years. He then stashed them inside products whose English-language packaging, he said, made it likely they were destined for the West.
He knew well the practices of the camp in question, which was corroborated by other inmates, and he spoke as other inmates did of their work preparing mock tombstones. His handwriting and modest knowledge of English matched those of the letter, although it was impossible to know for sure whether there were perhaps other letter writers, one of whose messages might have reached Oregon.
If Mr. Zhang’s account truly explains the letter’s origin, the feat represents one of the more successful campaigns by a follower of the Falun Gong movement, which is known for its high-profile attempts to embarrass the Chinese government after being labeled a cult and outlawed in 1999.
Emboldened by an unusually open public debate in China that has broken out here in recent months over the future of re-education through labor, scores of former inmates have come forward to tell their stories. In interviews with more than a dozen people who were imprisoned at Masanjia and other camps around the country, they described a catalog of horrific abuse, including frequent beatings, days of sleep deprivation and prisoners chained up in painful positions for weeks on end.
Several former inmates recounted the death of a fellow inmate, either from suicide or an illness that went untreated by prison officials.
“Sometimes the guards would drag me around by my hair or apply electric batons to my skin for so long, the smell of burning flesh would fill the room,” said Chen Shenchun, 55, who was given a two-year sentence for refusing to give up a petition campaign aimed at recovering unpaid wages from her accounting job at a state-owned factory.
According to former inmates, roughly half of Masanjia’s population is made up of Falun Gong practitioners or members of underground churches, with the rest a smattering of prostitutes, drug addicts and petitioners whose efforts to seek redress for perceived injustices had become an embarrassment for their hometown officials.
All agreed that the worst abuse was directed at Falun Gong members who refused to renounce their faith. In addition to the electric shocks, they said, guards would tie their limbs to four beds, and gradually kick the beds farther apart. Some inmates would be left that way for days, unfed and lying in their own excrement.
“I still can’t forget the pleas and howling,” said Liu Hua, 51, a petitioner who was imprisoned at Masanjia on three separate occasions. “That place is a living hell.”
Even if they found the work exhausting, many inmates described the time spent in Masanjia’s workshops as a respite from mistreatment or the hours of “re-education classes” that often entailed an endless recitation of camp rules or the singing of patriotic songs while standing in the broiling sun.
Much of the work involved producing clothing for the domestic market or uniforms for the People’s Armed Police. But inmates say they also assembled Christmas wreaths bound for South Korea, coat linings stuffed with duck feathers that were labeled “Made in Italy” and silk flowers that guards insisted would be sold in the United States. “Whenever we were making goods for export, they would say, ‘You better take extra care with these,’ ” said Jia Yahui, 44, a former inmate who now lives in New York.
Corinna-Barbara Francis, China researcher at Amnesty International, said that abolishing or significantly reforming re-education through labor would prove daunting because it provides the police an easy way to deal with perceived troublemakers, but also because it can be lucrative for those who work within a sprawling system that includes more than 300 camps. In addition to the profits earned from the inmate labor, prison employees often solicit bribes for early release, or for better treatment, from the families of those incarcerated. “Given the serious money being made in these places, the economic incentive to keep the system going is really powerful,” she said.
During labor shortages, inmates say Masanjia officials simply buy small-time offenders from other cities on a sliding scale that begins at 800 renminbi, or about $130, for six months of labor. They include people like Zhang Ling, a 25-year-old from the eastern coastal city of Dalian who said she was among a group of 50 young women rounded up by the police last May during a crackdown on illegal pyramid sales schemes and then sold to Masanjia. While there, she sewed buttons on military uniforms but was released 10 months early after a brother paid for her release.
Masanjia officials did not respond to faxes and phone calls requesting an interview. Approached one recent afternoon, a half-dozen guards on a cigarette break outside the women’s work camp refused to answer any questions. One guard, however, made a point of correcting the way a question was phrased. “There
are no pr
isoners here,” she said sternly. “They are all students.”
Sears Holdings, the owner of Kmart, declined to make an executive available for an interview. But in a brief statement, a company spokesman, Howard Riefs, said an internal investigation prompted by the discovery of the letter uncovered no violations of company rules that bar the use of forced labor. He declined to provide the name of the Chinese factory that produced the item, a $29.99 set of Halloween decorations called “Totally Ghoul” that include plastic spiders, synthetic cobwebs and a “bloody cloth.”
Although he was released from Masanjia in 2010, Mr. Zhang, the man who said he wrote the letter, has vivid memories of producing the plastic foam headstones, which were made to look old by painting them with a sponge. “It was an especially difficult task,” he said. “If the results were not to the liking of the guards, they would make us do them again.” He estimated that inmates produced at least 1,000 headstones during the year he worked on them.
His letter-writing subterfuge was complicated and risky. Barred from having pens and paper, Mr. Zhang said he stole a set from a desk one day while cleaning a prison office. He worked while his cellmates slept, he said, taking care not to wake those inmates — often drug addicts or convicted thieves — whose job it was to keep the others in line. He would roll up the letter and hide it inside the hollow steel bars of his bunk bed, he said.
There it would remain, sometimes for weeks, until a product designated for export was ready for packing. “Too early and it could fall out, too late and there would be no way to get it inside the box,” said Mr. Zhang, a technology professional who studied English in college.His account of life in the camp matched those of other inmates who said they produced the same Halloween-themed items.
Last December, Ms. Keith, the woman who bought the product in 2011 but did not open it until the following year, sent the letter she found to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which said it would look into the matter. An agency spokesman, citing protocol, said that he could not confirm whether an investigation was under way, but that such cases generally took a long time to pursue.
For Ms. Keith, a manager at Goodwill Industries, the experience has been sobering. She said she previously knew little about China, except that most of the household goods she bought were made there. “When that note popped out and my daughter picked it up, I was skeptical that it was real,” she said. “But then I Googled Masanjia and realized, ‘Whoa, this is not a good place.’ ”
Shi Da contributed research.
Can Young Americans Revive Manufacturing in The U.S.?
in UncategorizedCarolyn Krause / Special to The Oak Ridger
But Lonnie Love, leader of the automation, robotics and manufacturing group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, sees the device as a key to exciting young Americans to innovate and learn engineering and manufacturing skills.
The United States has been the dominant manufacturing country in the world, he said, “but we are losing our edge. We are losing our share mostly to Asia, especially China and India. How do we turn that around?”
President Obama and politicians in both parties have emphasized the importance of manufacturing because it creates jobs that pay well.
In a recent talk to Friends of ORNL, Love asked, “But, what happens if we turn the tide and get our companies that manufacture goods abroad to bring jobs back to the United States?” How many Americans will be qualified to work for companies with expanded manufacturing capabilities, he also asked.
“Our STEM education has been on a steady decline,” Love said, referring to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “The U.S. is not ranked in the top 20 worldwide in any of the sciences or math.”
He noted that UT-Battelle, the managing contractor of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, is addressing both of these problems. Love is personally involved in trying to fix both of them.
He is a user of 3-D printing, or additive manufacturing, to make innovative “hydraulic hands” as prostheses. He is also a mentor of high school boys and girls with engineering talents who participate in a robotics competition. They have been given the opportunity to do 3-D printing and traditional manufacturing at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility off Hardin Valley Road in Knoxville. Love works at the MDF.
His wife is a high school teacher who encouraged him to mentor students at Hardin Valley Academy, where she works. He learned students today no longer take “shop.” In the 1980s, he took auto shop and woodworking shop.
But one Hardin Valley student told him the school has a 3-D printer. Love found out a teacher bought a 3-D printer with startup funds, but had no idea how to use it. So teachers stacked books on it.
“I sat down with three boys and told them they are my mechanical designers,” he said. “I taught them how to use SolidWorks 3D CAD design software. They designed robot parts and printed out 25 percent of the robot they planned to enter into a competition. Kids today are very bright and very creative, but they just need some guidance.”
He explained to the students how a 3-D printer works. The printer has a powder bed with a support underneath and an electron beam to melt the powder.
“You melt the powder where your part is,” he said, “and then step the table down a few thousandths of an inch to accommodate the next deposited layer of powder, which is melted. You repeat the process many times, growing your part.” The support’s overhang can be broken off or eroded away using a salt.
Then the HVA students asked if they could work in the MDF to finish their robot projects.
So, Love asked ORNL Director Thom Mason and ORNL Deputy Director Jeff Smith if the MDF could be opened to local schools participating in the FIRST Robotics Smoky Mountains regional competition in Knoxville. Mason and Smith agreed.
“But, the kids will still need to use a band saw, circular saw, drill press and other power tools to build their robots,” Love told them. “Are you OK with that?” After all, safety is ORNL’s No. 1 priority.
Smith said “yes,” adding, “We are going to train the kids to use power tools safely.”
So, the MDF staff opened their labs to 100 to 150 boys and girls from local schools in the first year and trained them. The next year 200 to 250 kids used the MDF equipment to build their robots. Last fall, 550 students showed up at the MDF.
For six weeks, many boys and girls worked evenings and Saturdays to complete their robots. The robots this year had to throw discs and climb pyramids.
On March 28-30 at the third annual FIRST Robotics regional competition at Knoxville Convention Center, Hardin Valley Academy, Oak Ridge High School and Hall High School won the championship title, and a team from Roane County High School netted the Rookie All-Star award. These four of the 14 teams sponsored by UT-Battelle at a cost of $50,000 went to the national finals held April 24-27 in St. Louis.
“All four teams competed well at the nationals,” Love said, adding he expects future Knoxville alliances to be strong competitors in subsequent national FIRST Robotics competitions.
Maybe next year Oak Ridge and Knoxville area youth will make the news and put 3-D printing in a more positive light.
American Made K’NEX Announces New Additions to Building Sets Line
in NewsHatfield, PA (PRWEB) June 10, 2013
K’NEX Brands, the US construction toy company focused on Building Worlds Kids Love®, is pleased to introduce four new additions to its K’NEX Building Sets line. These K’NEX Building Sets contain 100% made in the USA bricks, rods and connectors that invite children of all ages to imagine, build and play!
The K’NEX Intro Assortment is the perfect set for first-time builders. Choose from one of three sets: the classically designed plane, helicopter with working propeller, or truck with rotating wheels. Collect and build all three to create a space shuttle with cargo doors that open and close. Each set contains 60+ classic, made in the USA K’NEX rods and connectors and full color instructions and offer great building at a great price. Suggested retail price is $5.99. Ages 5+. Available Now.K’NEX Building Sets: Robo-Creatures Assortment
Collect & build all three motorized robots in this assortment. Choose from Robo-Sting, Robo-Smash, or Robo-Strike. Each set boasts over 150 made in the USA K’NEX bricks, rods & connectors. Each robot features a motor that allows for unique and exciting mechanical movement. Collect & combine all three to create the ultimate robotic creature. Suggested retail price is $15.99. Ages 7+. Available Now.
K’NEX Building Sets: Extreme Sports
Cool extreme sports builds will capture young builders’ imaginations. The Extreme Sports building set features 10 building ideas including a hang glider, jet skier, sky diver, sport bike rider and more. Build your own daring stunt man complete with the included helmet-head and then create an action-packed stunt of your own imagination for him to complete. Set also features full-color instructions and 250+ Classic K’NEX pieces including made in the USA rods & connectors. Suggested retail price is $17.99. Ages 7+. Available Fall 2013.
K’NEX Building Set: Amusement Park Series Assortment-Space
Collect & build 3 space themed rides with the new Amusement Park Series assortment. Choose from the Star Shooter Coaster, Amazin’ 8 Coaster, or the Super Sonic Swirl. All three rides are motorized for exciting realistic performance. Each amusement park ride comes with over 400 parts including made in the USA rods & connectors. Collect & build them all and create your own amusement park—right in your living room. Each sold separately. Suggested retail price is $29.99. Ages 7+. Available Fall 2013.
Founded in 1992, K’NEX Brands, the world’s most innovative construction toy company, was established to make and sell what has become one of the world’s leading integrated construction systems for children and is America’s STEM building solution. Winner of over 250 international awards and recognitions, K’NEX, America’s building toy company, is focused on Building Worlds Kids Love and encourages youngsters to “imagine, build and play.” From the living room to the classroom, K’NEX has building toys specially designed for every age group and skill level. The K’NEX family of brands includes K’NEX Building Sets, K’NEX Thrill Rides, K’NEX Education, Lincoln Logs®, Tinkertoy®, NASCAR®, Angry Birds™, Mario Kart Wii™, Mario Kart 7™, Super Mario™, PacMan™ and more. Since 1992, The Rodon Group, a subsidiary of K’NEX Brands, L.P., has manufactured over 31 billion parts for the K’NEX building toy system. Join us as we help build the leaders of tomorrow. For more information, please visit http://www.knex.com or http://www.rodongroup.com.Both The Rodon Group and K’NEX are corporate members of The Made in America Movement.
Made in USA Documentary Debuts During USA's Largest Small Town Independence Day Celebration
in UncategorizedWest Virginian Josh Miller treks from Washington D.C. to his hometown of Charleston, WV surviving only on Made in America products pursuing the truth of one simple question: “We are willing to die for our country, but are we willing to buy for our country?”
Showing at the historic Alpine Theater, located in the 200 block of West Main Street, WV, to a sold-out audience, “Made in the USA: The 30 Day Journey” will begin at 7:00 p.m. In the 93-minute documentary, Miller interviews politicians, businessmen, historians, and economists in hopes of discovering what has caused the decline of USA made products.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, West Virginia lost 29,716 manufacturing jobs between 1994 and 2012. Creator of the film, Josh Miller, asks everyday people if “Made in the USA” means anything to them. If not, what does that mean for the future of the country?
For 30 days, he used products that are “Made in the USA”, not just assembled or designed, but actually made in America — and the task pushed him to the brink. But why? In a land of plentiful resources, why is finding Made in the USA labels so difficult?
At just 27 years old, Josh Miller is part of a new generation of benevolent thinkers willing to take on national issues from a grassroots level with complete confidence that their actions will make a difference. Miller has a psychology degree from West Virginia State University and played independent professional baseball after college. He sacrificed time with his new wife, and starting a family to get this message made and heard.
“What inspired me to take this journey and create this film was the closing of Century Aluminum plant in my hometown,” says Miller, whose father-in-law lost his job along with 650 other workers during the closing. “I wanted other people to see the affect something like this has on a small community. I felt they needed a voice.”
Miller, a resident of Charleston, WV was joined by a very experienced cameraman, Justin Moe. The footage Moe obtained is part of the documentary with producers Ron Newcomb, Josh Miller, and Joe Burke. They will present the “Made in the USA: The 30 Day Journey” documentary.
Exclusive screenings have already been secured in Dayton, OH and Ripley, WV. Members of the media are invited or may request an additional screening and exclusive interviews with the film’s production team. Reviews and media coverage links can be found at http://www.usa30days.com.
Ron Newcomb
Made in the USA Films LLC
Phone: 703-895-3681
Email: USA30DAYS@gmail.com
Can Young Americans Revive Manufacturing in The U.S.?
in UncategorizedBut Lonnie Love, leader of the automation, robotics and manufacturing group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, sees the device as a key to exciting young Americans to innovate and learn engineering and manufacturing skills.
President Obama and politicians in both parties have emphasized the importance of manufacturing because it creates jobs that pay well.
In a recent talk to Friends of ORNL, Love asked, “But, what happens if we turn the tide and get our companies that manufacture goods abroad to bring jobs back to the United States?” How many Americans will be qualified to work for companies with expanded manufacturing capabilities, he also asked.
“Our STEM education has been on a steady decline,” Love said, referring to science, technology, engineering and mathematics. “The U.S. is not ranked in the top 20 worldwide in any of the sciences or math.”
personally involved in trying to fix both of them.
He is a user of 3-D printing, or additive manufacturing, to make innovative “hydraulic hands” as prostheses. He is also a mentor of high school boys and girls with engineering talents who participate in a robotics competition. They have been given the opportunity to do 3-D printing and traditional manufacturing at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility off Hardin Valley Road in Knoxville. Love works at the MDF.
His wife is a high school teacher who encouraged him to mentor students at Hardin Valley Academy, where she works. He learned students today no longer take “shop.” In the 1980s, he took auto shop and woodworking shop.
“I sat down with three boys and told them they are my mechanical designers,” he said. “I taught them how to use SolidWorks 3D CAD design software. They designed robot parts and printed out 25 percent of the robot they planned to enter into a competition. Kids today are very bright and very creative, but they just need some guidance.”
“You melt the powder where your part is,” he said, “and then step the table down a few thousandths of an inch to accommodate the next deposited layer of powder, which is melted. You repeat the process many times, growing your part.” The support’s overhang can be broken off or eroded away using a salt.
Then the HVA students asked if they could work in the MDF to finish their robot projects.
“But, the kids will still need to use a band saw, circular saw, drill press and other power tools to build their robots,” Love told them. “Are you OK with that?” After all, safety is ORNL’s No. 1 priority.
Smith said “yes,” adding, “We are going to train the kids to use power tools safely.”
So, the MDF staff opened their labs to 100 to 150 boys and girls from local schools in the first year and trained them. The next year 200 to 250 kids used the MDF equipment to build their robots. Last fall, 550 students showed up at the MDF.
For six weeks, many boys and girls worked evenings and Saturdays to complete their robots. The robots this year had to throw discs and climb pyramids.
On March 28-30 at the third annual FIRST Robotics regional competition at Knoxville Convention Center, Hardin Valley Academy, Oak Ridge High School and Hall High School won the championship title, and a team from Roane County High School netted the Rookie All-Star award. These four of the 14 teams sponsored by UT-Battelle at a cost of $50,000 went to the national finals held April 24-27 in St. Louis.
“All four teams competed well at the nationals,” Love said, adding he expects future Knoxville alliances to be strong competitors in subsequent national FIRST Robotics competitions.
Maybe next year Oak Ridge and Knoxville area youth will make the news and put 3-D printing in a more positive light.
Jobs Primary Motivations for ‘Buying American’
in UncategorizedMore specifically, the most common reasons for “buying American” were to support the U.S. or to be patriotic, mentioned by 32% of adults who sought out U.S.-made products in recent months, and to keep or create jobs in the country, mentioned by 31%. Additionally 20% said that buying U.S.-made products is good for the U.S. economy in general.
Fewer Americans in the April 11-14 poll mentioned specific attributes of U.S. versus foreign products as reasons for buying American, including the perception that U.S. products are better quality (13%) or concerns about the safety or quality of products made overseas (3%).
Though a substantial percentage of Americans, 45%, say they have made a special effort to buy U.S.-made products in recent months, more, 54%, have not made an attempt to do so.
There are wide generational differences in U.S.-centric shopping habits, with older Americans (61%), aged 65 and older, much more likely than younger Americans (20%), aged 18 to 29, to actively search for products made in the U.S. Younger Americans may be more accustomed to getting their products from overseas, and with international free trade agreements increasingly common, they may not have been exposed to as much pressure to “buy American.”
In addition to differences by age, there are differences by race and place of residence, with whites and those living in rural areas showing a greater propensity to favor American-made products. There are at best modest differences by gender, income, and party identification.
Americans Willing to Pay More for U.S.-Made Products
Sixty-four percent of Americans say they would be willing to pay more to buy a U.S.-made product than a similar product made in other countries. This includes the vast majority, 88%, of those who make a special effort to buy U.S.-made products, but also nearly half of those, 44%, who do not.
Given that 45% of Americans say they are making a special effort to buy U.S.-made products, and 64% say they are willing to pay more for American-made products, there is a group of about 20% of Americans who are not actively “buying American” but who seem willing to do so, even if they end up spending more.
The question did not specify how much more consumers would have to pay for U.S.-made products than for foreign-made products, but Americans may be less willing to pay significantly more for products made in the U.S. Thus, the 64% willing to pay more for American-made products may be an upper boundary estimate.
Nearly half of young adults, 43%, say they are willing to pay more for U.S. products. However, that figure is much smaller than the 70% of Americans aged 30 and older who are willing to do the same.
Americans Believe U.S. Quality Improving, but Attitudes Unchanged Since 1990
Most Americans believe that U.S. products are better now than they were a few years ago — 71% say they are a lot or a little better, while 16% say they are a lot or a little worse. However, those views are no more prevalent than they were more than 20 years ago, the last time Gallup asked the question in 1990.
Meanwhile, 52% say the U.S. has gained ground on Asian countries in terms of the quality of goods the country produces. But again, little has changed in Americans’ views on the topic since 1990.
One thing that has changed since 1990 is the rise of Chinese-made goods sold in the U.S. The 1990 question did not specify China as an Asian competitor, and Gallup did not include China in the 2013 update to ensure the current measurement is comparable with the past.
Implications
“Buy American” behavior is far from universal in the U.S., but nearly half of Americans say they actively try to buy U.S. products, and even more say they are willing to pay more for U.S. products.
Patriotism and concern for the health of the U.S. economy are major reasons behind people’s shopping for American-made products, but those attributes may be in shorter supply among younger Americans who find less appeal in U.S.-made goods. In fact, Gallup has found younger people in the U.S. ranking among the least patriotic subgroups of Americans.
If younger consumers continue to be less interested in buying U.S.-made products as they get older and future generations show a similar weak commitment to buying American, the wide generational divide in U.S. product shopping behavior could be a concern for the future market of U.S. products.
At the same time, there does seem to be a sizeable latent market for U.S. products that could be tapped, exemplified by the roughly one in five Americans who are not actively shopping for American-made goods but who say they are willing to pay more for U.S. products.
Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted April 11-14, 2013, with a random sample of 1,012 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.
Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones and cellular phones, with interviews conducted in Spanish for respondents who are primarily Spanish-speaking. Each sample of national adults includes a minimum quota of 50% cellphone respondents and 50% landline respondents, with additional minimum quotas by region. Landline telephone numbers are chosen at random among listed telephone numbers. Cellphone numbers are selected using random digit dial methods. Landline respondents are chosen at random within each household on the basis of which member had the most recent birthday.
Samples are weighted to correct for unequal selection probability, nonresponse, and double coverage of landline and cell users in the two sampling frames. They are also weighted to match the national demographics of gender, age, race, Hispanic ethnicity, education, region, population density, and phone status (cellphone only/landline only/both, cellphone mostly, and having an unlisted landline number). Demographic weighting targets are based on the March 2012 Current Population Survey figures for the aged 18 and older U.S. population. Phone status targets are based on the July-December 2011 National Health Interview Survey. Population density targets are based on the 2010 census. All reported margins of sampling error include the computed design effects for weighting.
In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
View methodology, full question results, and trend data.
For more details on Gallup’s polling methodology, visit www.gallup.com.
What Are the True Costs of Offshoring?
in Uncategorized“The buzz at the show was that manufacturing is returning to America, and every contract manufacturer I spoke to at the show had experienced a ‘reshoring’ event,” said Nash-Hoff.
Time magazine’s April 22 cover article also noted the reshoring trend. The article “Made in USA: Manufacturing is Back — But Where are the Jobs?” is replete with photos of consumer products that have returned to American-based manufacturing from offshore.
What is refueling the trend of reshoring? Brands are not returning on an impulse or because of public pressure, IndustryWeek reports. They are doing so “to more efficiently serve the world’s largest free market. Unlike when they left, this time they are measuring why they should return.”
Too many companies moved their production to countries like China based solely on the unit prices. “Buyers are rewarded with the money they save their company based on the piece price,” added Nash-Hoff. “They fail to see the bigger picture.”
As the cost of manufacturing overseas is being re-examined using total costs models, several factors have been at the forefront. Nash-Hoff listed a few of the major factors that first led to bringing work back to the U.S.:
Nash-Hoff added, “When one or two of those problems became egregious, then companies would make the determination to return manufacturing” to the U.S.
The Reshoring Initiative, a non-profit industry-led effort to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States founded in 2010, has created total cost of ownership (TCO) software and spreadsheets that calculate many of the hidden and overlooked aspects when deciding where to manufacture. TCO refers to an estimate of the direct and indirect costs and benefits related to the purchase of any part, subassembly, assembly, or product.
The Reshoring Initiative’s founder, Harry Moser points out, “Not factored often enough are costs associated with shipping, inventory time, quality issues, and exchange-rate risks.”
According to Moser and Nash-Hoff, other hidden costs of sourcing production offshore can include:
Keith Mobley of Life Cycle Engineering has earned an international reputation as one of the premier consultants in the field of plant performance optimization. In an interview with IMT, he said, “Labor makes up about half of typical manufacturing cost. If you can drop the labor costs by 40 percent to 80 percent by moving offshore then that really impacts operating profit. What is unseen is the cost of unemployment, health care, Social Security, and all of the infrastructure costs that result from the loss of manufacturing plants.”
American consumers are also putting more pressure on retailers to have more American-made products. Nash-Huff referred to recent polls that she has seen over the past few years that indicate 78 to 80 percent of consumers would be willing to pay more and prefer to pay for U.S. made goods.
On that same note, Time magazine reported in April that Walmart promised to buy $50 billion more U.S.-made goods over the next decade for its Walmart and Sam’s Club stores.
Sell More Shoppers on Buying Made in USA Clothing
in American Made, Manufacturing & SourcingSucceeding as a small business involves identifying your company’s unique value proposition and articulating it, he notes. Shama Kabani, chief executive of Marketing Zen Group, a Dallas marketing business, agrees. “You have to be careful in [the] marketing of anything [of] becoming a one-trick pony. There’s got to be more about your products that make them sell. For instance, if your customer service and shipping [are] not worked out, being made in the U.S.A. won’t help at all,” she says.
What you can do is reinforce customers’ interest in and loyalty to your clothing line by emphasizing that you are employing American workers to produce durable, well-made goods that meet the high standards of U.S. consumers.
“Tell your employees’ stories and have them tell the story of your brand,” Barnes suggests, making sure your message is honest and authentic, not “fabricated by some PR contractor.” You might come up with a video featuring your employees thanking customers for supporting them, their families, and their communities, for instance. “People are more likely to pay $10 extra for something if they see the impact their support makes,” Barnes says.
Something that showcases local craftsmanship could also tap into the artisanal buying trend that has consumers favoring small local businesses.
Transparency and integrity will be extremely important in such a marketing campaign, Kabani says: “You don’t want to say, ‘Buy from us because we’re made in the U.S.’ and then have someone find out you’re using illegal workers in a sweat shop. You have to have a true sense of why it matters to you, or eventually it looks like a gimmick.”
Once your message is perfected, send it out over social media and video-sharing sites and to bloggers who write about your industry and its products. “Make sure you’re telling the story, giving them a link, and making it easy for them to share it,” Kabani says.
That means putting “like” or “share” buttons on all your Web pages, including your shopping cart if you’re selling online. Making it easy for your customers to let their Facebook (FB) friends and Twitter contacts know they have just purchased clothing from you is a simple way to boost your visibility, but it’s a step often overlooked by smaller companies, she says.
Norton's U.S.A. Celebrates 6 Years of Made in USA
in American Made, Marketing Your BrandFrom June 11-15, 2013, Norton’s U.S.A. will be sharing its special anniversary deals and events. Each day of the week will feature a discount in a different department of the store. There will also be daily raffles ($50 retail value). On Thursday June 13, Norton’s U.S.A. will be holding a lively Bingo Night. From 6PM-8PM, participants will have the chance to win gift certificates worth up to $25!
On Saturday June 15, the store will be part of the Barrington Summer Wine Walk from 2PM-6PM. The celebration fun continues with a family movie night on Saturday June 15 beginning at 9PM. The movie night will feature a showing of “Fly Away Home” right on the store! To add to the family fun, complimentary popcorn and lemonade will be served. So, be sure to grab your chair and blanket and head over to the store for the free event! If you would like to shop before the movie, plan to arrive at the store at 8PM.
For more details on the magnificent deals at Norton’s U.S.A., please check the website at www.nortonsusa.com.
Norton’s U.S.A. is excited to celebrate with you!
Norton’s U.S.A. is located at 400 Lageschulte St,, Barrington, IL 60010. Normal store hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday: 10:00AM-5:00PM. The store is open Thursday 11AM-7PM. There are special hours during events. The online store is always open at www.nortonsusa.com.
Why Tech Manufacturing Jobs Are Coming Back To America
in Jobs, Manufacturing & SourcingTo start, offshoring isn’t as cheap as it used to be. For example, wages of around 60 cents an hour during the height of the technological migration to Asia have risen to as high as $6 per hour in China’s eastern manufacturing centers, according to JLL. Increasing oil prices also play a role.
Second, as tech companies see increasing global competition, they need to protect their intellectual capital in new product manufacturing, and keeping production of new products within the United States makes it easier.
Third, keeping operations in close proximity to executives, designers, and engineers helps the product launch teams stay on task and during critical early-stage production.
Fourth, tech companies with U.S. locations are better equipped to quickly address end-user needs.
Finally, companies are more likely to find the workers with the technical skills necessary to operate complex systems in today’s highly automated manufacturing facilities.
“This regionalization of high-tech manufacturing is characterized by the creation of jobs requiring strong technological skills — think engineers on production lines — as opposed to reshoring where similar job functions are imported back to the United States from overseas,” said Greg Matter, vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle. “Having access to this talent is one of the reasons that manufacturing facilities for technology firms are often located in tier-one locations where labor and real estate are generally more expensive.”
Indeed, about 79 percent of moderately high-tech manufacturing jobs and 95 percent of very high-tech manufacturing jobs were located in the 100 largest American metropolitan areas in 2010, according to JLL. More than one-third of the most high-tech positions reside in companies on the West Coast. Lower-level technology jobs, meanwhile, are most concentrated in the southern states.
JLL expects that through 2018, high-tech manufacturing jobs will proliferate further in Silicon Valley. Austin, too, is becoming a magnet for high-tech manufacturing growth. Other cities poised to attract these jobs include Los Angeles; Binghamton, N.Y.; Portland, Ore.; Boulder, Colo.; Phoenix, Az.; Boston; and Boise, Idaho.
This article, “Why tech manufacturing jobs are coming back to America,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Get the first word on what the important tech news really means with the InfoWorld Tech Watch blog. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.
This Is The Way Blue-Collar America Ends
in Economy, JobsRockwell Automation sold over $6 billion worth of industrial control products last year, more than half of those outside the United States and over one-fifth to emerging markets. Some 61 percent of its 22,000 employees are based outside the U.S. While 58 percent of last year’s sales were in manufactured devices, 42 percent were in computer hardware, software and communications components.
Take a close look at Rockwell Automation, and you’ll understand why the modern manufacturing industry manages to be both a tremendous economic driver and a tough business in which to get a job. It’s becoming standard for many manufacturing companies to require employees to have college degrees–and some jobs require a PhD. Factory-floor openings are scarce and often require specific credentials. A company like Rockwell Automation creates wealth and jobs all over the world, which is great for the world–and for shareholders– but not always so great for Milwaukee. The city’s number one economic problem is a lack of middle-income jobs, and no industry has yet emerged to replace the jobs the traditional manufacturing sector used to provide.
Rockwell Automation still has a production facility in the Milwaukee area, at an industrial park in a suburb called Mequon. Here, machines print circuit boards embedded with microprocessors containing software coded by Rockwell developers. The circuit boards are then fitted into variable-speed drives, electric motors built to carry specific loads as efficiently as possible. Workers assembling the drives are as likely to spend their shifts peering at data on a computer screen as they are wielding drills.
While the shop floor employs 350 people, the facility also houses 750 workers whose jobs range from marketing to procurement to engineering. The presence of higher-level expertise makes this facility a hub for service and repair work. “We love it because when we have a problem on the shop floor, I can grab an engineer by the ear,” says Thomas Groose, manufacturing engineering manager. Most of the folks working on the shop floor hail from the suburbs. “We’re not on a bus line here,” Groose notes.
Manufacturing remains an important sector in Milwaukee, employing some 14 percent of the metro area workforce. In Wisconsin, manufacturing accounts for about 18 percent of state GDP and 93 percent of exports, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.
But the city and the state have seen a steep decline in manufacturing jobs over the past half-century, and the kind of jobs that remain require a higher level of expertise. Between 1961 and 2001, the city of Milwaukee lost 69 percent of its manufacturing positions. Some of that work relocated to suburbs like Mequon. But overall, the seven counties in southeastern Wisconsin saw a loss of 83,000 jobs, according to Vanderwalle & Associates, a Wisconsin economic strategy firm.
Many jobs disappeared altogether, as high-tech equipment replaced manual labor. The jobs that remain increasingly require applicants to present a two-year degree or a specific certification. Today, fewer than 40 percent of U.S. manufacturing employees have jobs in actual production, according to the Congressional Research Service. The loss of manufacturing jobs had devastating impact on Milwaukee. Like other post-industrial cities, Milwaukee has suffered decades of economic decline and a spike in inner-city unemployment. Today, the city of Milwaukee has the lowest employment rate for working-age African-American males of any city in the country–worse even than Detroit, according to research from Professor Marc Levine at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The manufacturing jobs that remain are largely suburban and inaccessible by public transportation, putting them out of reach for the population that needs them the most.
Making factories more productive is Rockwell Automation’s business, and executives there find the media focus on job loss frustrating. “We’d like you to start talking about output, and judge manufacturing based on how much stuff we make, not on how many jobs,” says John Bernaden, director of external communications. He points to figures illustrating a 15 percent productivity increase in American manufacturing since 2009 and 16 percent output growth.
Besides, counting manufacturing jobs is misleading, as growth in the sector creates jobs elsewhere, says Michael Laszkiewicz, vice president and general manager of the power control business at Rockwell Automation. “When we make a decision to build a new plant or establish a new product line, and we add new people in manufacturing, for every ten manufacturing jobs we add five or six jobs in the supply chain supporting manufacturing,” he says, including other transportation and service jobs.
“When I look at our economic challenges and the need to reduce unemployment, I think manufacturing needs to get a priority in terms of regulatory and legislative policy so that it’s encouraged to grow,” Laszkiewicz says.
The problem, from the perspective of the average Milwaukeean, is that when a global business like Rockwell Automation builds a new plant, it could just as easily be in Shanghai or Singapore as in Oconomowoc. The supply chain impact need not accrue only in the United States. More often than not, the spillover benefit is spread all over the world, like the company’s business. And support work in service industries often doesn’t pay workers a family-supporting wage.
Rockwell Automation has achieved great success since taking over the Allen-Bradley Company in 1985, but Rockwell and its peers haven’t brought Milwaukee mass prosperity the way that Allen-Bradley and its peers once did. The fourth industrial revolution may be on the horizon, but right now real wages in the area are flat and unemployment remains high.
Rockwell is still hiring, and it’s still taking on entry-level workers. But the company doesn’t hire just anyone. On the shop floor, the company is seeking high-performing students and workers with technical skills. And for its offices, it needs firmware development engineers. “The bar has been raised,” Laszkiewicz says.
Lenovo Paves the Way for Made in America Computers
in American Made, Manufacturing & Sourcing“There’s a business case to be had for manufacturing here in the U.S.,” Lenovo’s North American President Jay Parker told ABC News’ “World News” in an interview at the new facility. “Some customers desire to have products that are assembled in the U.S. and so we believe it’s a competitive advantage for us.”
New Jobs, New Business Model
Lenovo, which is the second-largest PC manufacturer in the world, began production of its ThinkCentre M92p desktop and its ThinkPad Helix convertible ultrabook at the plant in January but will ramp up full production by the end of this month by adding the ThinkPad Tablet 2.
The Nances are just two of the 115 new employees to work on the manufacturing lines in the 240,000-square-foot facility. And as Lenovo expands production into tablets and then servers by the end of the year, Parker says the job numbers will go up.
“This is our first step. If we continue to grow, we’ll continue to scale up that facility,” he said.
Lenovo hopes to assemble several hundred thousand units in the first full year of production with two eight-hour shifts five days a week. The products will be made primarily for the U.S. market and will be shipped throughout the country.The computers will be assembled in North Carolina, but much of the parts and components, including the processor and RAM, will be made overseas and imported.
Lenovo, which was started in China and is headquartered in Beijing, will still make the majority of its products in its native country. It, along with many of the other major computer makers, moved production offshore when overseas labor became cheaper.
But that trend is reversing, even if it is on a smaller scale.
“Over time, and this isn’t just true of China, but the labor rates around the world have been compressing to some degree with the U.S.,” Parker said. “The labor rate difference isn’t quite what it was at one point. And when you’re talking about having to ship products from China or anywhere overseas, then there’s a logistics cost there that you can save partially by doing it here in the U.S.”
Motorola’s Moto X Phone Will Also Be Made in America
Parker said that doesn’t mean it is less expensive or even comparable in expenses to make products in the U.S., but the company does see other advantages, including speed of delivery, customization, and then the “Made in America” marketing message.
Google, Motorola and More
And Lenovo isn’t the only consumer electronics maker that sees it that way. Motorola announced last week that its plans to build its forthcoming Moto X Android smartphone in Fort Worth, Texas will result in 2,000 new jobs. Google has also started to assemble its Google Glass in California. Apple has also announced its plans to make a version of a Mac computer in the U.S. later this summer.
HP, Lenovo’s closest competitor in the PC market and the No. 1 maker of PCs, has made a select few of its enterprise desktop and workstations in a facility in Indianapolis, although hasn’t made any consumer-aimed computers there. Dell also says it has had a U.S.-based manufacturing presence, and that its server systems are made at its campus in Austin, Texas.
Whether those other companies will grow computer manufacturing in America remains to be seen, but Lenovo has made it very clear: This is just the start for the company. “For manufacturing, it’s a start,” Parker said. “And as long as we’re continuing to grow at the rate we’ve grown at, we look to add to that over time. We believe that it’s possible and probable [to grow].”
That promise of more growth makes Stephanie Nance excited as she puts on more stickers on the Made in America hardware. “It’s not some job that can just be sent anywhere,” she says. “We can do the same thing that they can here just as good as quality as overseas.”
Google-owned Motorola Builds World’s First Made in America Smartphone in Texas
in American Made, Manufacturing & SourcingGoogle has tried making hardware in the United States before. Last year, it planned to assemble the Nexus Q, a home media player, in California. But the company postponed the device after it received poor reviews and then quietly killed it.
Mr. Woodside said Motorola and Google were taking over an old Nokia manufacturing plant that had employed 16,000 workers when it was last in use 15 years ago. He said around 2,000 employees would be hired to work at the 500,000-square-foot building. The plant will be up and running by August, he said.
The new workers will be employed by Flextronics, a manufacturing company Motorola hires for its work worldwide. They will be hired by August in jobs ranging from entry level roles to engineering, said Danielle McNally, a Motorola spokeswoman. The new jobs are “different and separate” from the more than 4,000 positions that Motorola eliminated last year, she said.
Mr. Woodside acknowledged that while the Moto X will be built in the United States, not all of its parts would necessarily come from American manufacturers.
“The components will come all over the world,” he said. Display parts will be built in South Korea, for example, and processors will be made in Taiwan, he said.
Google executives have given clues about what a Motorola phone would do. It would have batteries that last longer than a day, they have said, would not break when dropped and would include features like a better camera, artificial intelligence and sensors that recognize people’s voices in a room, for example.
“Think about your device — battery life is a problem, if a kid spills a drink on your tablet screen it shouldn’t die, if you drop your phone it shouldn’t shatter,” Larry Page, the chief executive of Google, told analysts last month. “There’s real potential to invent new and better experiences, ones that are much faster and more intuitive. So having just seen Motorola’s upcoming products myself, I’m really excited about the potential there.”
Mr. Woodside said Wednesday, though, that phones with unbreakable screens would not be included in this year’s Motorola phones.
Mr. Woodside said the Moto X phone was in his pocket — but coyly shook his head when asked to show it off.
Claire Cain Miller contributed reporting.
Norridge Boutique: Selling Made in USA Merchandise
in American Made, Marketing Your BrandEva DeFilippis of Elmwood Park has wanted to find space to open a boutique for some time.
The graduate of Trinity High School in River Forest has a background in clothing.
“My dad was a tailor and owned a clothing store,” DeFilippis said. “We kept some of the fixtures from that store, and now those racks are in this store.
“It’s like he’s here with us,” she said with a smile.
DeFilippis’ Deva Salon, now in its third incarnation, is a couple of doors down from Boutique3, in the same plaza.
“I never seemed to have the space for the boutique,” she said. “I first opened (Deva Salon) 14 years ago near Irving Park Road and Cumberland.
“I moved into a larger space (in Regency Plaza) and again to an even larger space,” she said. “But I still didn’t have the room.
“So when this place was available, I thought this would be perfect.”
Joining Esposito and DeFilippis in this venture is DeFilippis’ sister-in-law, Geralyn.
Esposito, a surgical assistant by trade and friends with the DeFilippis women, said she always wanted to be her own boss.
“Owning my own business has been a vision for me, a goal,” Esposito said. “But it’s so hard to start a business.”
She finds the boutique to be a godsend.
“Monday through Friday, I’m a surgical assistant,” she said. “Saturday and Sunday, I’m here.
“I love this so much. It’s so wonderful.”
Among the reasons the women find the shop so rewarding, they said, is they can bring to the area quality fashions at reasonable prices compared to other, similar stores in the surrounding communities. And a lot of the products in competing shops, they said, are made abroad, with China dominating the labels.
Eva DeFilippis said her inspiration to open Boutique3 was the lack of choices for one-of-a-kind clothing in the area.
“No woman wants to look like everyone else,” she said. “In the 1980s, we used to shop boutiques.
“Then something happened, and the little specialty stops disappeared,” she noted. “We want to bring back that unique shopping experience.”
Esposito agreed.
“Even though we haven’t been open that long, we have quite a few customers who say this shop is so convenient,” she noted. “And more and more people are looking at the label to see if it was made here.”
Boutique3
5050 N. Cumberland Ave. in Regency Plaza, Norridge
(708) 456-1230
www.SalonDevaBoutique3.com
Specializes in affordable fashions made in the United States
Hours: 10:30 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Friday
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
Hours to expand during the summer season; adding mother-of-the-bride dresses in the fall
Closed Monday
Made in America Company Lacks Support
in American Made, Manufacturing & SourcingBut what if you couldn’t find investors to help you grow your American-made business unless you took your product overseas. A local business is facing that dilemma and 10News spoke with the owner who says that the company is now turning to the general public for help.
“I had an issue with my underarms sweating when I got nervous,” said Billy Thompson, owner of Thompson Tee.
Thompson turned his unusual problem into a thriving business — making garments that uses patent-pending technology to prevent embarrassing pit stains. The company is growing, profitable and made in America. But that seems to be a problem.
“You’re definitely fighting against the grain trying to produce garments here in America,” Thompson said.
Thompson and his partners are proud to be American-made. They want to keep Thompson Tee in the U.S. and they’re willing to pay twice as much in labor to do so.
But they can’t seem to find an investor who feels the same way. They had a big offer to take the product overseas, like a lot of other major clothing lines, where production costs would be cut dramatically. But Thompson and his partners turned down the lucrative offer.
“You know when you sit back and you think about it and you do a gut check and you think ‘OK, when we started this thing what were the core values to us?’ ” said Thompson. “And one of them was being made in the U.S.A.”
Now, the company is turning to crowdfunding. It started a grassroots, online campaign to raise the $25,000 needed to cover materials and labor. That would keep Thompson Tee in America and create American jobs.
“So we’ll see if the American public really does have an appetite for American made goods,” he said.
The crowdfunding campaign began June 1. Thompson said failure is not an option and that the company plans to stay in the U.S. no matter what.
Learn more about the company by watching the video below:
Does It Matter Where Products Are Made?
in American Made, Manufacturing & SourcingAs a result, great strides on these issues were made in the U.S. in the 20th century. These efforts culminated in the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency in December 1970, consolidating 15 components from five agencies for the purpose of grouping all environmental regulatory activities in a single agency.
Since then, the U.S. has developed a comprehensive body of law to protect the environment and prevent pollution. The EPA enforces more than 15 statutes or laws, including the Clean Air Act; the Clean Water Act; the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetics Act; the Endangered Species Act; the Pollution Prevention Act; and the Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticides Act. In turn, each of the 50 states has its own body of law to comply with federal laws and regulations.
Cleaning up the nation’s air, water, and land hasn’t come cheap. Since passing these laws, the U.S. government has spent trillions of dollars to clean up and prevent pollution. Individuals, small businesses, and corporations paid the taxes that funded these programs. But businesses were hit with a double whammy. They not only had to pay taxes for the government to carry out its end of these programs, they had to pay cleanup costs for their own sites and buy the equipment to prevent future pollution. In addition, they had to hire and train personnel to implement and maintain mandated pollution prevention systems and procedures.
According to a Census Bureau report “Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures,” as a result of a survey of 20,000 plants last conducted in 2005, U.S. manufacturers spent $5.9 billion on pollution equipment, and another $20.7 billion on pollution prevention.
The EPA has achieved some major successes:
• New cars are 98 percent cleaner than in 1970 in terms of smog-forming pollutants.
• Dangerous air pollutants that cause smog, acid rain, lead poisoning have been reduced by 60 percent.
• Levels of lead in children’s blood have declined 75 percent.
• 60 percent of the nation’s waterways are safe for fishing and swimming.
• 92 percent of Americans receive water that meets health standards.
• 67 percent of contaminated Superfund sites nationwide have been cleaned up.
As a result, we now have cleaner air in our cities and cleaner and safer water in our streams, rivers, lakes, bays, and harbors than at any time since the Industrial Revolution began. These vast environmental improvements made in the last 40 years have benefitted every single American.
In contrast, India and China have been getting more polluted in the last 30 years as they have industrialized. Since 2006, Blacksmith Institute’s yearly reports have been instrumental in increasing public understanding of the health impacts posed by toxic pollution, and in some cases, have compelled cleanup work at pollution hotspots. Blacksmith Institute reports have been issued jointly with Green Cross Switzerland since 2007.
Six cities in China and four cities in India were listed in the Blacksmith Institute’s “Dirty 30” of the 2007 report, “The World’s Worst Polluted Places.” This list was based on scoring criteria devised by an international panel including researchers from Johns Hopkins, Harvard, and Mt. Sinai Hospital, along with specialists from Green Cross Switzerland who participated in assessing more than 400 polluted sites.
It’s hard to describe the horrors of pollution in Chinese cities. Imagine living in Xiditou (pronounced shee-dee-tow), about 60 miles east of Beijing, where the Feng Chan River that runs through the town is now black as ink and clotted with debris. The local economy has doubled in just four years, but at a terrible cost. More than 100 factories occupy what were once fields of rice and cotton. These include dozens of local chemical plants, makers of toxins including sulfuric acid, and these factories disgorge wastewater directly into the river. Industrial poisons have leached into groundwater, contaminating drinking supplies. The air has a distinctively sour odor. The rate of cancer is now more than 18 times the national average.
According to the USA Today article, “Pollution Poisons China’s Progress,” of July 4, 2005, “People regard their drinking water as little better than liquid poison, but unable to afford bottled water for all their daily needs, most adults continue to drink it. They buy mineral water only for their children.”
Another horrible location is Tianying, in Anhui province, which is one of the largest lead production centers in China, with an output of half of the country’s total. Low-level technologies, illegal operations, and a lack of air-pollution control measures have caused severe lead poisoning. Lead concentrations in the air and soil are 8.5 to 10 times national standards. Local crops and wheat at farmers’ homes are also contaminated by lead dust, at 24 times the national standard.
The ironic note to these statistics is that China actually has more stringent restrictions on lead than the U.S. The difference is that neither the local nor the national government is enforcing the laws. Residents, particularly children, suffer from lead poisoning, which causes encephalopathy, lower IQs, short attention spans, learning disabilities, hyperactivity, hearing and vision problems, stomachaches, kidney malfunction, anemia, and premature births.
Perhaps you would like to live in Wanshan, China, termed the mercury capital of China because more than 60 percent of the country’s mercury deposits were discovered there. Mercury contamination extends throughout the city’s air, surface water, and soils. Concentrations in the soil range from 24 to 348 mg/kg, 16 to 232 times the national standard. To p
ut this into perspective, the mercury from one fluorescent bulb can pollute 6,000 gallons of water beyond safe levels for drinking, and it only takes one teaspoon of mercury to contaminate a 20-acre lake – forever. Health hazards include kidney and gastrointestinal damage, neurological damage, and birth defects. Chronic exposure is fatal.
China is now the largest source of CO2 and SO2 emissions in the world (SO2 causes acid rain). Japan, South Korea, and the northwest region of the U.S. suffer from acid rain produced by China’s coal-fired power plants and higher CO2 readings from easterly trade winds.
The horrific effects of pollution in China and its staggering cost in human life, are a graphic example of why Chinese companies can outcompete American companies – not only because of their disparity in wages, but also because their government does not enforce the same environmental and social standards. As Americans, who place a high value on human life and protecting our environment, we wouldn’t have it any other way. But American manufacturing industries do pay a penalty competing against China.
During China’s rapid industrialization of the last 30 years, the U.S. has spent billions on technologies and equipment to clean up and prevent pollution. China had a golden opportunity to benefit from all the hard lessons learned by developed countries during their own industrialization. If China had purchased the pollution abatement equipment developed in the U.S., their industrialization would not have caused such horrendous pollution. Millions of lives would have been saved!
In the U.S., our landfills wouldn’t be filling up with discarded products from China that are so cheap that it is easier to throw them away than repair them. Wouldn’t it be worth paying more for “Made in USA” products that are higher quality and last longer?
Thus, if you are concerned about global pollution and want to save lives in both China and the U. S., you should choose to buy “Made in USA” products that have been produced in the most non-polluting manner that is technically feasible at present. My next article will take a look at India’s environment.
Could Newark Be a Manufacturing Hub Again?
in Manufacturing & SourcingU.S. Isn't Respecting Meat Labeling Rules, Mexico says
in Economy, Manufacturing & Sourcing“We can’t understand why once the very WTO issues a ruling, the government of the United States does not respect it,” Martinez said.
“We have talked with beef producers in the United States and Canada, and totally agree this is an arbitrary decision and means discrimination against Mexican beef, which we will never agree with and as a government will defend against.”
Meat exporters in Canada and Mexico say the new rules would cut even deeper into cattle and hog shipments that have already slumped by as much as half in the last four years.
The Canadian government has threatened a possible retaliatory strike against U.S. imports, and is hoping Mexico will join it.
The WTO Appellate Body said last year that U.S. country-of-origin labeling rules, commonly known as COOL, were wrong because they gave less favorable treatment to beef and pork imported from Mexico and Canada than to U.S. meat.
Meat labels became mandatory in March 2009 after years of debate. U.S. consumer and some farm groups supported the requirement, saying consumers should have information to distinguish between U.S. and foreign products.
Garments Can Be Made in USA Safely, with Profit
in American Made, Manufacturing & SourcingWhy did the garment industry leave El Paso?
In 2002 the World Trade Organization allowed foreign made products to be imported in the U.S. without tariffs. This allowed low dollar garments to be sold in the U.S. at lower prices than what most American manufacturers could compete with. Many American manufacturers left and when they went, so did the blue jean capitol of the world.
At around 2002, a man named Lawson Nickol had been working for a USA made jeans manufacturer who decided to leave the U.S. and manufacture its items in Mexico. Nickol could not bear the decision as he was a passionate USA made supporter who felt a strong responsibility to support American workers. He soon resigned and started a USA made jean manufacturer of his own with the help of his son BJ – the All American Clothing Co.
The All American Clothing Co. struggled at first, surviving on family savings, financial risks, and working long hours. Yet each year, the USA jean company continued to grow. After 11 years in the business, the All American Clothing Co. has gone from a small closet in warehouse space to 45,000 square feet of warehouse and main offices. The company is now operating a cut and sew factory in El Paso, Texas attempting to create jobs and bring back the once blue jean capitol of the world.
If their success continues, rebirthing the American denim industry will be the All American Clothing Company`s legacy. Together with it`s leadership, employees, patrons, and supporters they will continue to spread the word, help to fill empty buildings with employees, and create American jobs. It`s an All American thing.
For the original version on PRWeb visit:
http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebUSA-made-jeans/made-in-America-jeans/prweb10764885.htm
Made in USA is Back in Style For Small Businesses
in Reshoring, Small BusinessAP Business Writer
“Shipping costs are tremendous,” he says. “I could put that money into the manufacturing side in the U.S.,” he says.
Reverie is one of a growing number of small businesses that are chipping away at the decades-old trend of manufacturing overseas. They’re doing what’s known as reshoring, moving production back to U.S. factories as labor costs grow in countries like China and India and shipping also becomes more expensive. Over the last 20 years, the price of a barrel of oil has risen to about $95 from $20.
There are other issues encouraging the shift. Owners are tired of having to wait weeks for shipments on slow-moving container ships, and they want to get products to customers faster. Some newer businesses aren’t even considering overseas manufacturing. It’s not just small businesses. Some of the largest companies in the U.S. are also joining the trend. Apple Inc. and Caterpillar Inc. are among the manufacturers planning to bring production back to the U.S.
Reverie has had the bases of its beds made in Taiwan since the company was founded. Rawls-Meehan and a business partner in Taiwan agreed that the cost savings and proximity to many customers were good reasons to manufacture there.
“The mentality was that products were going to be manufactured more cheaply in Asia than in the U.S.,” Rawls-Meehan says.
But shipping costs have risen to as much as 20 percent of the wholesale cost of a bed made in Asia. In 2004, it was just 10 percent on some of Reverie’s products. So the company is now making a new line of upscale beds in Silver Creek, N.Y., near Buffalo. Shipping on those beds accounts for no more than 5 percent of the wholesale price. That offsets the higher cost of labor in this country.
Rawls-Meehan is considering moving more of his manufacturing to the U.S., but because the company also sells beds to Asia and Australia, he says it likely will always have overseas production.
A good deal of U.S. manufacturing shifted to foreign shores in the 1990s and early 2000s. Workers in China, India and other countries earned far less than workers in U.S. factories. That lowered costs substantially for U.S. companies. Between 1997 and 2008, the U.S. lost nearly 4.5 million manufacturing jobs, according to the Census Bureau. And the amount of overseas manufacturing by U.S. companies grew 141 percent between 1997 and 2010, according to the government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis.
But the growing middle class in countries such as China and India have been demanding and getting higher wages. In Asia, labor costs are rising 20 percent a year, compared to 3 percent in the U.S., says David Simchi-Levi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology whose specialties include supply chain management.
A weaker dollar has also made foreign-made goods more expensive. A study by the consulting firm AlixPartners predicts that the costs of manufacturing in the U.S. and China on average would be equal in 2015. For products including disposable packaging and some metal parts, costs are already equal or less when they’re made in the U.S., the study found.
Reshoring began picking up momentum in 2010 after the recession and as the dollar began to lose value, says Lisa Ellram, a professor at Miami University of Ohio who specializes in supply chain management. Businesses that were unsure how strong their sales would be in a weak economy didn’t want to make as many commitments to far-flung factories.
“They really just didn’t have as much certainty about their volume and their needs, so it was maybe a little bit easier to deal with somebody closer,” she says.
Innovations in manufacturing in the U.S. are encouraging the shift. Many U.S. companies use robots and highly specialized processes that allow them to make custom components for the automotive and aerospace industries.
“Instead of hiring people, we’re using robots,” Ellram says. Chinese companies are also using robots, but U.S. manufacturers are ahead of them, she says.
The government doesn’t have figures tracking how much manufacturing companies are bringing back the U.S., according to Jeannine Aversa, a spokeswoman with the Bureau of Economic Analysis. About 50,000 manufacturing jobs came back to the U.S. between 2010 and 2012, many of them in factories that turn out electrical equipment and components and metal parts, according to the Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit group that advocates moving manufacturing back to the U.S.
The trend could gain momentum because demand for U.S. goods is growing. Ninety-five percent of manufacturers surveyed last year said they are increasing their purchases from domestic companies, or keeping them at the same level as 2011, according to ThomasNet, a company that operates an online marketplace where businesses can connect with manufacturers, distributors and service companies.
The amount of time it takes to get goods made overseas is another reason manufacturing is coming back to the U.S. It’s taking longer to ship finished products because cargo ships have lowered their speed by 20 percent to conserve fuel, Ellram says. That reduction adds four or five days to a container ship trip from China, she says. It takes two weeks or more for a ship to travel from China to the U.S., depending on which ports it departs from and where it makes its deliveries.
Shipping times matter for companies that need to get their goods to market quickly. Now that Cotton Babies, a manufacturer and retailer of baby merchandise, has moved manufacturing of its cotton diapers to Denver from Egypt, it has cut in half the time it takes to get them to market, says CEO Jennifer Labit.
Product development can be slowed by the distance between designers in the U.S. and manufacturers in other countries, Labit says. Communication takes longer and expensive overseas trips are often necessary to make sure that the products are being made to specifications.
Quality, and the ability to fix problems faster, gives small domestic manufacturers an advantage over foreign companies, Ellram says.
“Those are the things that (domestic) small businesses can use as a selling point,” she says.
A myriad of problems helped Reading Truck Body decide to bring manufacturing of truck parts back to the U.S. from China.
Shipments were disorganized. The compan
y didn’t know until it opened containers which parts had been shipped. That meant it couldn’t be sure ahead of time which of its truck bodies could be finished and sold, national sales director Craig Bonham says. Reading, based in Reading, Pa., also was concerned about the amount of time it took to get shipments.
“It spans about three months from purchase order to the time you get products to North American shores,” Bonham says. “That timeline did not allow us to become reactionary to market demands.”
Reading lost some sales because it didn’t have the parts to finish a truck a customer wanted. But the impact of unpredictable shipments went beyond lost revenue — it also led to chaos on the production line and frustration among the company’s managers.
“You feel a larger sense of dependency when you’re relying on someone that far away,” Bonham says. The company received its last shipment from Asia in December.
It also dealt with high expenses to send two employees to China each quarter, at a cost of $100,000 a year.
But with production now entirely in the U.S., the company is more confident.
“We have more control of our destiny,” he says.
Follow Joyce Rosenberg on Twitter: @JoyceMRosenberg
Learn how you too can begin reshoring and creating jobs here in the U.S.A. Check out how Harry Moser and his team at the Reshoring Initiative can help. Reshoring Initiative: http://www.reshorenow.org/
Do Americans Really Care How Their Clothes Are Made?
in Jobs, Manufacturing & SourcingHer mother, Ranjana Akhter, was found sobbing near the rubble of the Rana Plaza factory where her daughter worked, days after the eight-story complex collapsed and killed more than 1,100 workers. Viewing dozens of corpses a day, the 35-year-old woman still hoped her daughter had somehow survived.
The victims retrieved from the debris were crushed and unrecognizable in the South Asian heat.
“I am looking for her body, but they are all decomposed now. It’s getting harder to identify,” said Ranjana Akhter, tears falling from her eyes.
The scale of the mismanagement and breadth of the human tragedies in Bangladesh powerfully illustrated what years of abuse, inhumane conditions and unthinkable danger could not: Garment workers in Third World countries take enormous risks to earn a living in Bangladeshi-owned companies that produce clothing for Western retailers.
At the end of this global production line stand millions of American shoppers whose favorite companies and brands — Benetton, The Children’s Place, Gap, J.C. Penney, Mango, Target and Sears — use Bangladesh as a launching pad for the goods Western consumers crave.
Clothing manufacturers in North America and Europe — operating with scant supervision of their operations — have made Bangladesh the second-largest exporter of clothes in the world. The enormity of this tragedy is already beginning to change the country’s free-for-all business climate.
Many international retailers rushed to embrace a labor-backed factory safety proposal after the April 24 collapse, the world’s deadliest industrial accident since India’s Bhopal chemical plant disaster took 2,260 lives in 1984.
4 million jobs at stake
More than 30 retail chains including H&M, the largest clothing producer in Bangladesh, agreed to sign onto the proposal, which requires public disclosure of factory inspections and company-paid renovations when problems are found.
But talks broke down between the labor coalition IndustriALL and trade groups representing U.S. retailers like Gap over language that might make stores liable for conditions in Bangladeshi factories while requiring union-style management restrictions. The retail groups said they could improve worker safety by conducting more rigorous inspections of their factories.
A major pillar of Bangladesh’s economy, the garment industry employs roughly 4 million people. Only China exports more clothing than Bangladesh, which has 5,000 factories of varying sizes producing for other major chains.
These global brands thrive in a place where the average worker earns the equivalent of 24 cents an hour, according to the Worker Rights Consortium, a worker advocacy group that criticized U.S. retailers for failing to sign onto the proposed changes. The wage for garment workers is much higher — sometimes four times that — which is why so many people are drawn to the industry.
Many of the garment operations have sprung up in the past decade in buildings sometimes refurbished in a hurry to capture customers. Western retailers contract with myriad unconnected workshops to get fabric and buttons and fasteners needed for their products. Though many importers require inspectors to check on working conditions, they do not oversee all aspects of building safety. Those laws are the authority of the government, which works hand-in-hand with the industry.
In fact, a consortium of Bangladesh factory owners is also a lobbying group that consults with the government on working conditions and safety matters. Government oversight is notoriously weak.
Rana Plaza was showing structural cracks before the collapse. They prompted some businesses to move out of the building, but that wasn’t enough for the factory to shut down. The owner was captured trying to flee across the Indian border and is under arrest on charges that he built illegal additional floors on a building not designed for manufacturing.
Since 2005, at least 1,800 garment workers have been killed in factory fires and building collapses in Bangladesh, according to the advocacy group International Labor Rights Forum. That includes the toll from Rana Plaza.
Despite this carnage, the retail industry has found a needy home in Bangladesh, a nation of 140 million mostly Muslim people that’s home to regular political strife and overwhelming poverty. Sixty million Bangladeshis are classified as “very poor,” and per capita income is $1,700 a year.
Its garment firms, which make up 80 percent of total exports, face pressure from foreign buyers to retain the nation’s chief selling point: the cheapest place to make clothes. The disaster highlights the perilous choice for Bangladeshis in the garment sector, 80 percent of them women who work as seamstresses and support entire families.
Some survivors say the jobs are no longer worth it.
“I will never work in a garment factory again, and never again in a multistory building,” said Asma Akhter, 22, who lay trapped in the rubble for three days before rescue.
‘This can’t be justified’
After a factory fire last November killed 117 people who were making T-shirts and jackets, “the government didn’t take any steps to prevent this type of incident. Another disaster like this can still happen,” she said.
“The garment factory owners sell the products abroad at a high price, but we get low wages. This can’t be justified,” said Asma Akhter, who hopes her secondary school education, unusual among her colleagues, will aid her job hunt.
Others see it differently.
Seamstress Asma Akhter, 25, who is no relation to the woman of the same name above, said she would be “helpless” without the garment sector.
“I don’t know what I could do,” she said. “If you want to survive you have to work.”
But nothing says world retailers have to stay in Bangladesh.
International companies must contend with a volatile political environment of frequent street agitation and confrontation. Regular strikes called by opposition parties wielding street power hamper production.
“We must stop the killing,” said Nazmar Akter, president of Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation and general-secretary of the Awaj Foundation of workers’ groups.
“It’s a global business. Everybody has the responsibility,” Akter said. “Workers in Bangladesh are unsafe, hungry, with bad living and working conditions. We are human. We want respect and dignity; that’s our demand.”
It’s Not Easy To Be Sure Your Clothes Come From Safe Factories
in Jobs, Manufacturing & SourcingBut when it comes to making sure that their clothes are made in factories that are safe for workers, they fall short.
“Clothing is one of our more challenging practices,” said Jason Lawrence, 35, who mostly buys secondhand. “I don’t want to travel around the world to see where my pants come from.”
Last month’s clothing factory building collapse in Bangladesh that killed more than a thousand people put a spotlight on the sobering fact that people in poor countries often risk their lives working in unsafe factories to make the clothes Westerners covet.
The disaster, which occurred after a fire in another Bangladesh factory killed 112 people in November, highlights something just as troubling for socially conscious shoppers: It’s nearly impossible to make sure that the clothes you buy come from factories with safe working conditions.
Very few companies sell clothing that’s “ethically made,” or marketed as being made in factories that maintain safe working conditions. Ethically made clothes make up a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the $1 trillion global fashion industry. And with a few exceptions, such as the 250-store clothing chain American Apparel Inc., most aren’t national brands.
Major chains typically use a complex web of suppliers that contract business to other factories. That means the retailers themselves don’t always know the origin of clothes when they’re made overseas.
Even a “Made in USA” label provides only a small amount of assurance: The tailors who assembled a skirt may have good working conditions, but the fabric may have been woven overseas in an unsafe environment.
“For U.S.-made labels, you have good assurance, but the farther you get away from the U.S., the less confidence you have,” said Craig Johnson, president of Customer Growth Partners, a retail consultancy.
Policing isn’t easy
Most global retailers have standards for workplace safety in the factories that make their clothes. And the companies typically require contractors and subcontractors to follow the guidelines. But policing factories around the world is a costly, time-consuming process that’s difficult to manage.
There were five factories in the building that collapsed April 24 in Bangladesh. They produced clothing for retailers including Children’s Place and the Canadian company Loblaw Inc., which markets the Joe Fresh clothing line.
“I have seen factories [in Bangladesh and other countries], and I know how difficult it is to monitor the factories to see they are safe,” said Walter Loeb, a New York-based retail consultant.
And some experts say that retailers have little incentive to do more because the public isn’t pushing them to.
America’s Research Group, which interviews 10,000 to 15,000 consumers a week, mostly on behalf of retailers, says shoppers seem more concerned about fit and price than worker safety or low wages.
C. Britt Beemer, chairman of the firm, said shoppers rarely mention “where something is made” or “abuses” in the factories in other countries.
“We have seen no consumer reaction to any charges about harmful working conditions,” he said.
Tom Burson, 49, said that if someone tells him a brand of jeans is made in “sweatshops by 8-year-olds,” he won’t buy it. But overall, there is no practical way for him to trace where his pants were made.
“I am looking for value,” said Burson, a management consultant who lives in Ashburn, Va. “I am not callous and not unconcerned about the conditions of the workers. It’s just that when I am standing in a clothing store and am comparing two pairs of pants, there’s nothing I can do about it.”
New awareness
Some experts and retailers say things are slowly changing.
Swati Argade, a clothing designer who promotes her Bhoomki boutique in the Brooklyn borough of New York as “ethically fashioned,” says people have been more conscious about where their clothes come from.
The store, which means “of the earth” in Hindi, sells everything from $18 organic cotton underwear to $1,000 coats that are primarily made in factories in India or Peru that are owned by their workers or that are designed by local designers in New York.
“After the November fire in Bangladesh, many customers say it made them more aware of the things they buy and who makes them,” Argade said.
Jennifer Galatioto, a 31-year-old fashion photographer from Brooklyn, has become thoughtful about where her clothes are made. “I am trying to learn the story behind the clothing and the people who are making it,” she said.
Some retailers are beginning to do more to ease shoppers’ consciences.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world’s largest retailer, said in January that it would cut ties with any factory that failed an inspection, instead of giving warnings first as had been its practice. The Gap Inc., which owns the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic chains, hired a fire inspector to oversee factories that make its clothing in Bangladesh.
Still, Wal-Mart, Gap and many other global retailers continue to back off from a union-sponsored proposal to improve safety throughout Bangladesh’s $20 billion garment industry. As part of the legally binding agreement, retailers would be liable when there’s a factory fire and would have to pay factory owners more to make repairs.
Fair Trade U.S.A., a nonprofit founded in 1998 to audit products to make sure workers overseas are paid fair wages and work in safe conditions, is hoping to appeal to shoppers who care about where their clothing is made. In 2010, it expanded the list of products that it certifies beyond coffee, sugar and spices to include clothing.
The organization, known for its black, green and white label with an image of a person holding a bowl in front of a globe, said it’s working with small businesses such as PrAna, which sells yoga pants and other sportswear items to merchants like REI and Zappos.
To use the Fair Trade label on their products, companies have to follow a set of safety and wage standards.
5% more expensive
Still, less than 1 percent of clothing sold in the U.S. is stamped with a Fair Trade label. And shoppers will find that Fair Trade-certified clothing is typically about 5 percent more expensive than similar items that don’t have the label.
Fair Indigo is an online retailer that sells clothes and accessories that are certified by Fair Trade U.S.A., including $59.90 pima organic cotton dresses, $45.90 faux wrap skirts and $100 floral ballet flats. It generates annual
sales of just under $10 million.
The company’s catalog and website feature some of the garment workers in countries including Peru. “We are connecting consumers with the garment workers on a personal level,” said Rob Behnke, Fair Indigo’s co-founder and president. “We are showing that the garment workers are just like you and me.”
Los Angeles-based American Apparel, which says it knits, dyes, cuts and sews all of its products in-house in California, touts on its website that the working conditions are “sweatshop free.”
In an interview in November, the company’s founder and CEO, Dov Charney, said companies can control working conditions but they need to bring the production to the U.S.
“When the company knows the face of its worker, that’s important,” Charney said.
American Manufacturing Is Going (to New) Places: And What That Means About Jobs
in American Made, JobsCEO, Society of Manufacturing Engineers
If America is to compete with low-waged countries, we must innovate ways to make things more cost effectively than the labor-heavy products that have been outsourced for the last two decades.
Manufacturing has long been the primary source of innovation, and the industry is using this creativity to remain competitive in a global market. And this is impacting the kinds of workers manufacturers need today.
For example, by automating processes, factories can now run “lights-out” operations that require no workers on site. Should we bemoan the loss of the repetitive-assembly jobs that used to be needed to support this type of activity or celebrate that this company can mark their products “Made in America,” and keep the higher-skilled jobs required to keep its lights out here in this country?
Manufacturing jobs are changing. We can no longer expect manufacturing to employ our nation’s low-skilled workers. Manufacturing jobs are now a part of the “knowledge economy.”
A healthy manufacturing industry of the future is one that keeps the research and development, design and production — and the highly paid manufacturing jobs that come with it — in America. Although these jobs won’t be as plentiful as they were in the last century, advanced manufacturing jobs average $77,000 compared with the workers in all other industries who average only $60,200 a year.
This illustrates why it is increasingly more critical to educate and train a workforce that can design parts and equipment, process how parts are made, manage, program and repair high-tech machines.
This education begins in the elementary schools where children are introduced to STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math). Participation in programs such as FIRST Robotics and SkillsUSA engage students and demonstrate real-word applications of science and math.
We also need to ensure our educational programs are creating workers ready for today’s jobs. SME is currently working within several communities to connect high schools, community colleges and local manufacturers in order to create a pipeline of future workers. With our knowledge of what manufacturers need, we work with more than 500 schools to offer industry-validated classes that prepare students for professions in today’s manufacturing environment. Online classes, for example, enable teachers to spend less time lecturing and more time applying this knowledge in the lab.
More than two thirds of manufacturers are having difficulty finding skilled employees. We cannot stand by hoping someone else will solve our skills gap crisis. Industry, government and educators need to work together to implement solutions that work.
Change is inevitable in manufacturing. Will we be ready to face the challenges ahead of us? Let’s stop talking and get on with making the future together.
Mark C. Tomlinson, CMfgE, EMCP, is executive director and CEO of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), a 501(c)3 organization that inspires, prepares and supports the advancement of manufacturing. SME works with government, educators and industry to resolve the skills gap that threatens manufacturing and the U.S. economy. Follow Mark Tomlinson on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/SocMfgEng
Is Reshoring a Myth or Reality?
in Manufacturing & Sourcing, ReshoringA lot has changed in four years. At last week’s Del Mar Design and Electronics Show (DMEDS) in San Diego, CA, a very successful fellow manufacturers’ sales rep, stopped me in the parking lot and said, “I used to think you were nuts, but you were right. Manufacturing is returning to America.” While this manufacturers’ representative sales agency is headquartered in southern California, it has affiliate companies in Mexico, Malaysia, China (Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen) and Taiwan (Taipei and Hsinchu) so I did not take this admission lightly.
The theme of this year’s DMEDS was “The Re-Birth of American Manufacturing, and it featured a full-day Reshoring track. This track began with my presentation on “Reshoring: Bringing Manufacturing Back to America Using Total Cost Analysis and ended with “Reshoring: What is a Fit and How Can it Save Your Company Money?” This track also featured “Lean Manufacturing is the Path to Operational Excellence,” “3D Printing: What it is, Isn’t, Will Be and Won’t Be,” and “Save Your Factory with Robotic Automation.”
While there were offshore companies exhibiting at DMEDS, it was dominated by U. S. manufacturers, regional contract manufacturers, and local sales reps and distributors. The buzz at the show was that manufacturing is returning to America, and every contract manufacturer I spoke to at the show had experienced a “reshoring” event.
In the past year, there have been numerous articles debating whether “reshoring” is a myth or really happening. For example, the cover article of the April 22, 2013 issue of Time magazine was “Made in USA – Manufacturing is Back ? But Where are the Jobs? The first page of the article is full of pictures of products that have returned from offshore, representing an unbelievable cross section of consumer goods, ranging from toys such as the Frisbee. Slinky and Crayola crayons to electric mixers, barbecues, saws, hammers, and many more.
The reason the article poses the questions about how many jobs are being created by the return of manufacturing to America is that the manufacturing plants of the present and future have more machines and fewer workers than in the past. Robotics, automation, and lean manufacturing are helping companies do more with fewer people, and the rapidly improving technology of additive manufacturing is changing the way parts are being made.
The article featured a glimpse of manufacturing’s future in the stories of two companies:
ExOne needs only two workers and a design engineer per shift to support its 12 metal-printing machines. The GE plant produces Durathon sodium batteries that are large and powerful enough to power cell phone towers. Because of being highly automated, the plant only employs 370 high-tech workers in a 200,000 sq. ft. facility.
What was most encouraging to me was that the article reported that Ashley Furniture is building a new plant south of Winston-Salem, NC that will employ 500 people. This is an industry that even I doubted would ever come back to the U.S.
Key statistics pointed out in the article were that China’s average hourly wage was only $0.50 in 2000 but is projected to be $4.50 by 2015. This is probably a conservative estimate because China’s wages rose by 15-20% over the last five years but are expected to increase by another 60% in 2013 alone. Another factor noted is that the cost to ship a 40-ft. container from China to the West Coast rose from $1,184 in 2009 to $2,302 this year. These facts corroborate the Boston Consulting Group’s 2011 report that there will be a convergence in the total costs between China and the U. S. by 2015.
This quote from GE CEO Jeff Immelt concluded the article: “Will U.S. manufacturing go from 9% to 30% of all jobs? That’s unlikely. But could you see a steady increase in jobs over the next quarters and year? I think that will happen.” I agree and so does Harry Moser, founder of the Reshoring Initiative and developer of the Total Cost of Ownership TM spreadsheet.
Mr. Moser’s organization promotes and tracks cases of reshoring across the U.S. He estimates that between 2010 and 2012, about 50,000 jobs were created in the U.S. because of the trend—which equates to 10% of the 500,000 manufacturing jobs created in the past three years.
On the myth side of the debate, the 2012 Hackett Group’s report, “Reshoring Global Manufacturing: Myths and Realities” by Michel Janssen, Erik Dorr and David P. Sievers
states, “By next year, China’s cost advantage over manufacturers in industrialized nations and competing low-cost destinations will evaporate.” However, they conclude that “few of the low-skill Chinese manufacturing jobs will ever return to advanced economies; most will simply move to other low-cost countries.
Using hard data from their 2012 Supply Chain Optimization study, they analyzed the trend in “reshoring” of manufacturing capacity, and their findings debunk the myth that manufacturing capacity is returning in a big way to Western countries as a result of rising costs in China. The report states, “The reality is that the net amount of capacity coming back barely offsets the amount that continues to be sent offshore.”
The report also offers recommendations on how companies should plot their manufacturing sourcing strategies. Interestingly, their recommendations incorporate some of the factors that Mr. Moser and I include as part of a Total Cost of Ownership analysis, such as “integrate the views of manufacturing, procurement, finance and business-unit leadership,” “Establish a game plan to deal with risk: Geopolitical, supply base, environmental and commodity risks are a given,” “Establish a proactive approach to anticipate risks, creating mitigation plans with clear triggers for implementation,” and “Broaden the decision making approach beyond total landed cost.”
The Hackett Group’s definition of “Total landed cost” is not as broad and encompassing as the definition of Total Cost of Ownership I provide in the 2009 edition of my book and that Mr. Moser uses in the TCO spreadsheet he developed in 2010. Their definition is “Total landed cost is the set of end-to end supply chain costs to transform raw materials and components into a finished
good ready for sale. Key components include: raw material and component costs, manufacturing costs (fixed and variable), transportation and logistics, inventory carrying cost, and taxes and duties.
My definition of TCO includes the “hidden costs of doing business offshore,” such as Intellectual Property theft, danger of counterfeit parts, the risk factors of political instability, natural disasters, riots, strikes, technological depth and reserve capacity of suppliers, currency fluctuation. Mr. Moser’s TCO spreadsheet includes calculations for factors such as Intellectual Property risk, political instability risk, effect on innovation, product liability risk, annual wage inflation, and currency appreciation.
While the number of companies bringing products lines back to America is increasing, I have to admit that as manufacturers’ sales reps for all American companies; we are still losing business to China for individual parts our principals are quoting. Just recently, we lost several rubber parts that our rubber molder has made for a customer in our territory for 15 years. Our customer had been purchased by a multinational awhile back that has a subsidiary in China, so the new management decided to tool up these parts in China and discontinue ordering them from our molder. I am sure that the decision was made based on the lower piece price without doing a TCO analysis.
You can help your company get the most value for its dollars and help return manufacturing to America by doing the following:
I strongly believe that if more companies would learn to understand and utilize the TCO estimator spreadsheet of the “Reshoring Initiative,” they would realize that the best value for their company is to source their parts, assemblies, and products in America. Doing this would help return manufacturing to America to create a far higher percentage of jobs than the 10% that have been brought back to America thus far and help maintain more manufacturing in U. S.
Legislation Seeks to Tweak Standards for Made in USA
in American Made, GovernmentAmerican Made Clothing Companies Find Ways To Survive As Others Chase Cheap Labor Abroad
in American Made, ProductsHenry has been in the apparel business for three decades, enough to see nearly all of his competitors disband or head overseas in search of workers who will do the job for lower wages. Henry has taken the opposite route, shrinking the geographic scope of his supply chain and making that a marketing feature.
His company makes its products “dirt to shirt” through a supply chain that spans only 600 miles and boasts complete transparency. Customers are invited to use a website to input a special code emblazoned on the back of every shirt. The site then serves up the name, photo and contact information for every person whose labors went into creating the product, from the farmer who grew the cotton to the workers who print and dye the shirts.
His “most sustainable” T-shirt, which uses certified organic cotton, a transparent supply chain, with a patented environmentally-friendly print and dye system, costs around $14 wholesale. The same type of shirt would cost about $8 to make overseas, he estimated. In short, the $6 gap.
The difference comes down to paychecks. Workers at TS Designs in North Carolina are paid an average of $15 an hour, Henry said. The average factory worker in Bangladesh makes $0.21 an hour, according to the Institute of Global Labor and Human Rights.
“Our T-shirts cost more because of where they’re made and how they’re made,” said Henry, admitting that he can’t compete on price alone.
In the wake of the worst garment industry accident in history — the collapse of a factory in Bangladesh, which took the lives of more than 600 people — attention is again focused on the full costs of churning out low-priced goods via a global supply chain. Consumers are absorbing another reminder that bargains on store shelves in Los Angeles and Philadelphia may come at the expense of people toiling in unsafe conditions in Dhaka and Guatemala City.
For Henry and like-minded entrepreneurs in the U.S. — those seeking to buck the trends of global trade by manufacturing at home — the hope is that this consumer awareness may expand their market niche.
Online apparel retailer American Giant, for instance, does not compete with the world’s largest apparel brands on price. A men’s T-shirt bearing its label runs $24.50 — roughly four times more than its most inexpensive counterpart on the shelves at Walmart, Target or some other enormous retailer.
Ask the company’s chief executive, Bayard Winthrop, about disparity in price and he will tell you about the workmanship and quality of raw materials that goes into his T-shirts. But he will also tell you about geography: His shirts are made in America, and not on the other side of the world, in a poor country in which workers may be mistreated.
“I need to give that consumer an option for a product from a company that fits their system of beliefs,” Winthrop said.
Winthrop’s emphasis on quality is both a virtue and a necessity. Even mighty Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, could satisfy the consumer craving for low prices if it made its wares exclusively in the United States, he said.
“Can Walmart make a $5 tee in the U.S.? Probably not,” Winthrop said. “But can they make a $9 tee that lasts longer and made in the U.S.? Yes they could.”
Using hypothetical figures, Winthrop explained that if a manufacturer makes a T-shirt for $6 in the U.S., $3 of that would be fabric and design, while the other $3 would be labor. If you take production overseas, the labor cost would be less than $1. The fabric and design cost doesn’t change much, he said, especially for a simple piece of apparel like a T-shirt.
So vast is the apparel and so large the companies involved that they have hop-scotched the globe in permanent pursuit of lower labor prices somewhere new. In the United States, some 97 percent of all apparel is now imported, according to the American Apparel and Footwear Association.
This pursuit of lower prices through globalization amounts to a “race to the bottom,” said Pietra Rivoli, a professor of finance and international business at Georgetown University, and author of the book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy.
“This industry is so mobile that it gets fixed in one place and then pops up somewhere else,” Rivoli said.
But American apparel manufacturing may eventually see a resurgence, some experts said. The garment industry is undergoing the kind of technological change reshaping many industries: Machines are increasingly attending to tasks once performed by humans. That undercuts the overall cost advantages of going overseas in search of cheaper labor. As automation emerges as a greater force in the apparel trade, that could send investment back to the United States, where mastery of machinery remains a core strength.
“Technological progress has taken away the worst part of many jobs,” said Rivoli.
Right now, complicated tasks are still done by humans, such as the manual addition of buttons and zippers to clothing. But that is changing.
“It’s gradually mechanizing,” said Rivoli. “If you can get that to be 100 percent true and it’s machines that are producing our T-shirts, then companies aren’t going to be chasing around the world for those labor costs.”
Where China Goes To Buy Made In USA
in Economy, GovernmentChina’s Favorite U.S. States in 2012
In 2012, China purchased nearly $109 billion worth of U.S. goods, from soybeans to scrap metal, electronic components to heavy machinery. China will undoubtedly play a significant role as importer of Made in USA as locals keep getting richer. Some estimates forecast that China may have nearly 600 million middle class consumers by the end of the decade, as measured by the World Bank’s definition of middle class.
“Our exports to China remain a bright spot for many companies, particularly with European demand weakening,” said Frisbie in a statement last week.
Even though China’s economic growth slowed last year, growth in U.S. exports to China rose 6.5% from 2011, representing an increase of $6.6 billion.
Here’s a look at the top 10 states where Chinese companies go shopping for Made in USA.
Bill Would Create Made in California Label
in American Made, EconomyAll American Clothing Co. Launches New Tee Shirt Products that are ‘Grown and Sewn’ in the USA.
in American Made, ProductsThe new USA made tee shirts are available in the three styles of a ‘Freedom Eagle Seal’, ‘Logo Tee’, and ‘Premium Quality Denim.’ All feature a distressed design printed on the front of a heavyweight 6.1 oz, 100% cotton American made tee shirt. The All American style and durability of the tees make them perfect for work or play. The new tee styles will join a wide selection of American made jeans, short, shirts, footwear, and accessories.
One purchase from All American Clothing can help the American economy in many ways. For example, the clothing is made in the USA, the box it was shipped in was made in the USA, the website is hosted by a USA company, the shipping companies are all from the USA, and the people who make and deliver the clothing are U.S. citizens. Purchasing one made in USA shirt or a pair of jeans affects many jobs in many different industries.
About All American Clothing Co.
All American Clothing is a success story that continues to prove the American dream can still be achieved. The entire company supports a “USA Made passion” as they strive to foster loyalty among customers. All American Clothing Co. is conceivably the poster child for American made small business success stories. To find out more about the passion and effort it takes to build a business in today’s economy please visit http://www.allamericanclothing.com.
Logan Beam
All American Clothing Co.
888-937-8009
How American Excess is Destroying Lives Overseas
in Economy, Manufacturing & SourcingJust last week, a clothing factory in the country collapsed, with the body count now at over 500. Police have arrested the building’s engineer, who claimed the building was unsafe as-is, but allegedly played a part in adding three more floors to it regardless. The clothing factory itself was a station that produced American goods on the cheap cheap for large business chains such as J.C. Penny, Walmart, and H&M, to name just a few. This recent event has placed a lens of scrutiny under Western retailers for outsourcing cheap labor, but cheap labor overseas has always been an issue. It is American business and consumption that are driving forces behind the dismal conditions of oversea factories. Of course, it’s a reality that most businesses want to keep quiet and it’s something we may have heard in passing but want to ignore—because changing our shopping habits entirely would be a pain.
On the flipside, Bangladesh’s problematic clothing industry makes up for 80% of its exports.
Let’s pause for a moment and talk about China.
Back in February, I wrote a piece on how Chinese New Year celebrations were dampened by the country’s ongoing smog crisis. Since then, smog levels have not gotten any better. They’re hitting nearly decade-level highs in Hong Kong and ruining chances at a healthy upbringing for children growing up in urban cities. Goodness forbid if we were faced with these types of environmental hazards across America — but since it’s China, the average American could probably care less. But why is it that China is so steep in air pollution? Because of all its factories — and what are those factories producing? Cars that Americans drive, clothes that Americans wear, toys that American children play with, computers that Americans type with, the list goes on and on. The kicker is that this production occurs in the same sweatshop, underpaid conditions as Bangladesh, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and other places.
In light of the Bangladesh factory collapse, Disney is pulling from developing countries all over, but such drastic movement leads to a loss in jobs. What companies can do is flex their financial muscles and influence for an improved quality of work conditions overseas. Then again, that requires time, effort and resources — three elements that American companies probably aren’t aiming for in their desire to get their goods produced quickly, cheaply, and exported for more than a worker’s measly paycheck.
What we can do as consumers in order to shop more ethically is to research and spread the word. It’s our duty as consumers of these products to speak loud for the voices that suffer to provide for us.
About the writer:
Zainab is an undergraduate student born and raised in New York City, studying mass communications and journalism at the University of Delaware graduating in May 2013. Her interests include politics, fashion, writing, the media arts, travel, unhealthy doses of pop culture, intersectionality, and cultural criticism. She has written for university’s school newspaper, The Review, in addition for the Intellectualyst, a progressive online newspaper. Currently, she is a writing intern at PolicyMic. In 2011, Zainab assisted in research with University of Delaware’s Dr. Danilo Yanich which has since then been studied by the Federal Communications Commission and discussed in the New York Times. She is a member of three national leadership and honor societies. Currently her passions lie in the BBC rendition of Sherlock, philosophy, blogging, and books. Blog: In Medias Res