L.A.’s on a Spin : Boosted by Local Garment Makers, Textile Firms Defy Industry Trend
In a one-story factory near downtown Los Angeles, Edward Drasin stands in front of a row of knitting machines. The machines hum as giant spools of colorful yarn unravel into their bowels to emerge as yards of geometric-patterned knitted fabric.
Around the corner, some workers wash and pre-shrink the cloth. Across the room from Drasin, president of Drasin Knitting Mills Inc., others begin measuring and cutting pieces of the fabric in a process that will soon result in big piles of sweaters, skirts, pants and dresses.
“A piece of yarn comes in that door and goes out another door as a finished garment,” Drasin says, pointing toward a doorway through which a welcome, cool breeze flows into the crowded room.
Across town in the manufacturing district of Vernon, Chris Stone, president of Chris Stone & Associates, looks at rolls of fabric emerging from a flat-screen printing machine. The fabric looks like the canvas of an abstract artist--big, bold strokes of pastel colors.
“This will probably end up at Levitz Furniture,” Stone says, explaining that the cloth is being prepared for furniture upholstery. “We’re one of the best-kept secrets in Los Angeles. We’re much better known in North Carolina than here,” he says.
A study recently completed by the Los Angeles Economic Roundtable lets the secret out: Not only does Los Angeles have a textile industry, it is thriving.
Between 1984 and 1987, Los Angeles County textile mills produced jobs at a rate second only to that of construction--which was up 35%, according to the Economic Rountable analysis. The number of textile jobs grew to 10,600--a 21.8%increase--while textile mill jobs overall in the United States declined 3% in the same period.
The power behind the increase in textile making here has been the rapid growth of Southern California’s apparel business. And it’s not just the size of the local apparel industry, but the nature of it, says Goetz Wolfe, the Roundtable’s chief economic analyst.
He notes that apparel businesses in Los Angeles tend to concentrate on the production of trendy casual sportswear. Those businesses have to be able to respond quickly to changes in fashion, he said, to produce the “California look.” Part of their ability to respond includes close access to their supply sources, he adds, especially textile mills that are able to produce “California-look” cloth.
Dozens of textile entrepreneurs--with access to an abundant supply of low-cost, mostly immigrant labor--have moved in recent years to fill the need. Unlike the textile industry concentrated in the southeastern United States and several Asian countries, the industry here consists of many small, highly varied and highly specialized firms. There are no big weavers of cloth such as Burlington Industries and J. P. Stevens.
The weavers of Los Angeles serve mostly specialized markets. “We weave for interior designers, architects and special orders,” said Barbara Gibson, vice president of David S. Gibson Inc., a 25-year-old firm that employs 13 people.
“(Our firm is) an anachronism. Everything that is done here is done the way it was 100 years ago. We were able to buy a technology when we started that produced a certain look that has served us well,” Gibson said, surprised to hear of a growing textile industry in Los Angeles. “The growth has absolutely nothing to do with us.”
According to many industry officials, the growth appears to be primarily in two disparate sectors--knitting and the business of converting raw cloth into fabrics.
A major factor in the growth of local knitting mills is the worldwide popularity of knitted sportswear and the appeal of California designs, industry officials say. Also, they say a number of Korean immigrants have started textile businesses, and some Asian firms have shifted operations here to maintain their markets in the face of quotas on imported textiles imposed by the U.S. government.
Dollar Drop Helps
“They’re selling to the same people that they sold to offshore,” says Drasin, who describes his 150-employee firm as a “survivor” of 34 years in a business that has been through cycles of slack demand and fierce competition from imports. One factor aiding domestic knitters, he says, is the decline in the value of the dollar, which has made domestically produced knits less expensive.
Although lots of cloth is still produced overseas, Los Angeles has become a preferred spot for the processes of dyeing, treating and printing cloth that can be cut and sewn into garments.
About six printing plants and some 15 fabric dyeing plants are located in the county. LA Dye & Print Works Inc., which does both and also knits fabrics, didn’t exist five years ago, says President Helmut Ackermann. The company, with 524 employees, is now the largest of its type in Los Angeles. Both Ackermann and Stone say the growth of their businesses is due in part to the desire of garment makers to be close to plants that prepare their fabrics.
“They had to wait for fabrics from the East (Coast)and the Orient. It got to be too long and too cumbersome a process, especially in assuring quality,” Stone said.
Stone, who employs about 200 people, has made a reputation as a designer of fabrics, particularly for the home furnishing industry. Home furnishing fabrics account for about two-thirds of the firm’s business. The 10-year-old company maintains an in-house studio with full-time designers and is credited with giving a hand-painted look to fabric that has come to be known as the “California look.”
“The California style is a more contemporary, more upscale look,” he says. “It’s really been a plus for us.”
