Automation could fix the geographic constraints here, but it hasn’t yet, according to the consultant. “The cut-and-sew process is incredibly labor-intensive,” she said. “We don’t have the technology as yet for us to step back and say we have a fully-automated facility.”
Anwar keeps one foot in New York and one in Bangladesh. Her clients are in the U.S., but the manufacturers she connects them with are in Bangladesh. U.S. sourcing of textiles doesn’t make business sense for most of her large-scale clients.
Buyers are drawn to three factors, according to Anwar: convenience, price and experience. Experience translates to high quality and high productivity rates. For small quantities, 100 pieces of 15 styles totaling 20,000 units, Anwar spitballed, U.S. production resources might make sense — at a luxury price point.
Luxury fabrication skills are more distributed around the globe, but the skill to produce en-masse at low cost per unit is concentrated — and therefore so is production of the textiles that fuel it.
“We have had a generation, or two really, of folks who have now just purely focused on fashion design, on overseas sourcing,” Anwar said of the U.S. apparel industry. “You don’t have a lot of people who have really specialized in textiles and textile formulation.”
What we make now
A plentiful textile resource available at moment’s notice is one plenty of brands overlook.
“In theory you still could make this stuff here,” Stephanie Benedetto, the founder of Queen of Raw, told Supply Chain Dive. “You’d just have to use deadstock.” Deadstock, or fabric that has been ordered by and delivered to brands and designers, but will not be used and cannot be returned to the vendor is a virtually never-ending resource in the apparel industry.
Queen of Raw is an online marketplace for deadstock founded in 2014. Benedetto estimates the U.S. produces more deadstock than it does virgin fabric.
In addition to luxury materials like leather and silk, Queen of Raw is rich in the popular synthetic textiles that are produced in Asia in quantities and at prices the U.S. is unlikely to ever compete with, even after the hypothetical development sought by people like Henry and Duff.
It’s naive to think that we can just flip a switch, and suddenly everybody can just buy all American-made products.
Since the coronavirus pandemic began, Queen of Raw’s user base has grown exponentially. Many, if not most, U.S.-based brands canceled orders from their suppliers in February and March to hold onto cash and they are tentatively and carefully deciding what their next collections will look like.
“People are trying to fill holes in their supply chain,” Benedetto said. “Deadstock fills the gap. They can find it where they need it.”
The tone of Benedetto’s industry conversations has changed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, she said. Designers and production staff have free time right now — many have been furloughed or cut to half-time work. And some are using the time to dream up a different, less wasteful system that takes advantage of resources closer to home.
“It’s a little bit early to know for sure whether they’re going to act on what they’re talking about now,” she said. “But this is what we’re hearing talked about with the innovation departments of these brands and retailers. Can we create more localized on-demand, sustainable, efficient supply chains?”
An Asia-based supply chain for Asian markets, a U.S. supply chain for U.S. markets, a European supply chain for European markets — “full localization is the dream,” but it’s very far from the reality, Benedetto said.
Reality makes the conversation surrounding reshoring or localizing textile production bittersweet for those who know the industry intimately. If U.S. hemp is any proof, markets can’t do it alone — at least they haven’t yet. And even designers and manufacturers who want to source domestically find it difficult.
“It’s naive to think that we can just flip a switch, and suddenly everybody can just buy all American-made products,” Duff said. “That’s asinine.”
