PRODUCTION BACK IN THE USA? PROBABLY NOT

BRINGING PRODUCTION BACK INTO THE USA?

I have broached this subject in the past. I just do not believe textile manufacturing will come back to the USA for several reasons.

We have not had much of a textile manufacturing base for 30 or 40 years. That means all of the young people over this time period who might have been exposed to textile manufacturing weren’t because at all levels it does not exist.

To open a sewing plant, you need more than sewing operators; you need cutters, sewing machine mechanics and a variety of people doing other jobs, not to mention managers who know how to schedule production.

How about your suppliers, dying and finishing plants after the weaving plants send them the materials?

I am just touching on the easy aspects of opening a sewing operation, but it is more complicated that just this as I am sure many know when they opened their business which was probably not a sewing operation. The major component of any manufacturing operation are the people who you hire. In todays culture the hiring of people is the most difficult aspect of opening a business. It is if working is taboo to young people these days.

Having encapsulated some of the reasons that very large corporations will tell you they do not want to bring their production back to the USA is just a cover for what I believe is the real reason.

The textile business has been consolidating for many years. VF Corporation owns The North Face, Timberland, Lees and Wrangler Jeans, to name a few; I think they may own 40 companies overall in order to have 13 billion dollars in sales, and I believe they are publicly traded.

Columbia Sportswear is only in the 2-billion-dollar price range and they own Sorrel, and Mountain Hardwear and probably a few others.

How about Niki doing 20 billion or more, and Under Armour, and there are a cast of many more actors out there who do hundreds of millions or even billions that we do not hear about but are publicly traded.

The key words are “publicly traded”. We hear about these companies from the stock market reports doing good or bad and that information controls the activity of the investors.

I was thinking since these companies do not own any factories that the investors can visit versus if I wanted to publicly trade Wiggy’s since I am located entirely in the USA the investors if they wanted to could visit Wiggy’s. But, since these publicly traded companies own no factories, they can’t visit any. They could go to China and see production in the Honan factory making product for any one of these companies. However, along side one company is another brand being made.

So, the investors must rely on the word of the powers to be at these companies as to how much their sales are which can turn into profits that will cause the stocks to increase in value. But are the sales reported actually true, or are they as the accounts say, what ever you want me to make them.

It appears to me that this is a shell game. These companies buy other companies so they can add them to their bottom line. In many cases the buying company has zero knowledge of the company they have purchased and look at having the products made as cheaply as possible in China as an example in an effort to capture more of the market.

Whenever I have been approached by someone having an interest in Wiggy’s I always ask what knowledge they have of the sleeping bags business. They are truthful and say none. They are aware of the success of Wiggy’s and would send ALL production to China and ultimately make products that are so far from what Wiggy’s created that are sold through dick’s or rei to unsuspecting people. This is how they work.

Having all production in Asia is the start of the concealment of the business activity. Who actually knows how much merchandise is shipped throughout the world other than the USA? The world economy is not what it seems. How much of our styles of garments are sold in the middle east, Africa or India? How about Russia and most of the Baltic states? The Bahamas and central America are miniscule markets and while south America could be a good market it is suffering etc. Canada, New Zealand, Australia have companies that buy from the Asians themselves. So, what is left the USA the largest market in the world.

And we are seeing store closing daily here. so my question becomes who is buying all of what these companies claim to be selling? The investors are buying into what ever it takes to keep the stock prices up.

From my perspective production back in the USA from these multibillion dollar textile companies is not desirable because the investors could pay you a visit.