![]() Meanwhile, big fashion brands already struggling from reduced mall traffic and the growth of Instagram-driven online sales, have hit hard times. They were ordering overseas and they just weren’t getting their packages, and so they are running out of masks, running out of bouffant caps, running out of shoe covers,” said Miller, who was able to keep her 35 workers employed. When the stay-at-home orders were issued, Miller started serving the medical industry. We cut the same bikini top and bottom in probably a hundred different colors, and each color is like 20 or 30 units.” Things that overseas can’t do,” Miller said. “As their volume decreases, their prices increase overseas, and so it starts to make less economic sense. Lefty Production serves nearly 100 smaller designers who sell direct-to-consumer online or wholesale and want a batch of 300 to 10,000 articles of clothing - the kind of order that large-volume Asian factories either don’t handle or for which they might charge too much. “We don’t knit the fabric, but besides that part of the supply chain we have everybody in one team under one roof doing all that,” Miller said. It was co-founded by Marta Miller and partner Emily Roiff in 2012, after realizing that up-and-coming designers needed help getting their clothes made locally. One company that began making masks and other PPE is Lefty Production Co., a “one-stop” vertically-integrated shop that provides design consultation, pattern-making, cutting, sewing and other services to smaller brands. It’s a segment of the industry where responding to rapid changes in taste is paramount, and where local production can give an edge over foreign factories with lengthy supply chains - and potential quality-control problems, something recently highlighted by Chinese mask imports. AST joined a national PPE consortium of large apparel makers that includes Los Angeles Apparel and big outfits such as Hanesbrands. Mayor Eric Garcetti’s LA Protects initiative to produce 5 million masks, which is open to Los Angeles city and county businesses. More than 400 apparel companies have participated in L.A. This nimbleness allowed local businesses to compete with low-cost overseas suppliers, but it also exposed employees to possible infection and reignited allegations that its low-income, largely immigrant workforce was being exploited. ![]() While other sectors remained closed for months, Southern California’s apparel manufacturers, which employ thousands, turned on a dime to produce masks and other critically needed personal protective equipment. The virus outbreak has slashed trade and devastated the economy, but it’s also provided opportunities to some companies and industries that have maintained supply chains and production close to home - and a prime example is Southern California’s shrunken but still vibrant apparel industry. Gavin Newsom issued an order Thursday making masks mandatory in most public settings. Indeed, demand isn’t expected to wane anytime soon, especially now that Gov. “We kept doing that and we are still doing that,” said Dadabhoy, chief operating officer of the family-owned business, which prides itself on its “Made in the USA” label and ability to fill orders faster than its overseas competition. The company has made more than 10 million masks since. Abdul Rashid Dadabhoy knew he had a critical problem when Orange County supervisors shut down all nonessential businesses on March 17 in response to the coronavirus, forcing him to halt production at AST Sportswear, one of the nation’s biggest makers of T-shirts.īut he also had a nearly instantaneous solution.Īfter hearing of the critical shortage of face masks, Dadabhoy sat down with his three brothers the next morning and prototyped a cotton version, which workers at the company’s vertically integrated Brea factory churned out 1,200 pieces of the next day.
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