Killings Stun Garment Trade : Violence Shines Spotlight on Volatile Apparel Industry
Police investigating a string of killings and assaults of people tied to garment maker Carole Little distributed a composite sketch Thursday of a possible suspect while continuing to focus on the complex web of relationships between the company and the contractors that sew its products.
Police also continued to question a man charged in the 1993 slaying of a Carole Little contractor and the bombing of the home of a company executive at about the same time.
Three killings--of two Carole Little executives and the contractor--have stunned insiders and workers in what is one of Southern California’s most important industries. And the violence has cast a harsh spotlight on the volatile business of women’s apparel, a segment of the garment industry that has responded to declining sales by slashing its costs, in part by cutting back on the ranks of contractors.
Despite the close dependency between garment manufacturers and the contractors that make patterns, cut materials and sew the clothing, their relationships are often adversarial, industry experts say, and have been especially strained lately.
While the industry has been relatively free of violence since the 1930s, when some of the nation’s most infamous gangsters ruled New York’s garment world, some insiders say the escalating tensions are not surprising.
In an industry marked by ever-stiffer competition, “it would not surprise me, but it would sadden me” if some took to violence to resolve disputes, said Jose Millan, who is in charge of minimum-labor-standards enforcement in the garment industry for California’s labor commissioner.
While police are unwilling to say that the violent acts are definitely related, Los Angeles Police Detective Fred Miller said at a news conference Thursday that “there are some similarities” between the May 4 slaying of Carole Little Comptroller Rolando Ramirez and the December, 1994, killing of Kenneth Martin, Carole Little’s vice president for manufacturing.
One of Martin’s responsibilities was to line up contractors for the company.
On Thursday, Los Angeles police announced that Carole Little’s parent firm has offered a $100,000 reward for information on the killing of Ramirez, who was shot as he sat in his car.
The string of violence began in November, 1993, when Hakop (Jack) Antonyan of Studio City, co-owner of Glendale-based GAHA, a sewing contractor for Carole Little, died of gunshot wounds in what police described as an “execution-style” slaying. About the same time, three attempts were made on the life of Carole Little executive Karin Wong-Holzinger.
Arrested in the 1993 cases was Karapet Demirdzhyan, 35, who remains in Los Angeles County Jail on a charge of first-degree murder in the Antonyan killing. He also faces charges of lying in wait, a special circumstance that could result in the death penalty if he is convicted. No trial date has been set.
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Initially, Demirdzhyan was charged with the Nov. 3, 1993, bombing of the Long Beach home of Wong-Holzinger, former vice president of manufacturing for Carol Little. That charge was later dropped. She was not hurt in that or two other attacks.
A year later, Antonyan’s brother and fellow GAHA executive, Garnik Antonyan, and his wife were shot and wounded as they left work. Both recovered, and the firm still does work for Carole Little.
Of the Ramirez slaying, Miller said someone heard gunshots and saw a man (see accompanying composite drawing) near the scene of the shooting. “He may be a suspect or he may be a witness. If he’s a witness, we’d like him to come in for his own safety,” Miller said.
Law enforcement officers, Carole Little executives and industry insiders all say they are mystified as to why Carole Little, one of Southern California’s top makers of women’s clothing, should be a target of violence. Its reputation is of a company that pays its own workers well and doesn’t try to squeeze every last penny out of its contractors--a trait contractors say is increasingly rare in today’s highly competitive environment.
A contract from Carole Little was one to be prized--work for the company was “coveted,” said one contractor who asked not to be identified.
“There is concern, a little fear and also surprise that this company is apparently targeted,” said Corky Newman, president of the California Mart, showplace of the area’s garment industry. “This company is well thought of in the industry and in the contracting community.”
But in a lawsuit against her former company, bombing target Wong-Holzinger accuses Carole Little of treating contractors poorly and blames the firm for abruptly cutting off longtime contractors, leaving them with no livelihood.
GAHA does about $1 million worth of business with Carole Little each year, according to other contractors. That is not Carole Little’s single largest contract, but it is a fair-sized one in the teeming Southern California garment industry, where thousands of contractors vie for long-term contracts with reputable and stable manufacturers.
Contractors have been at the end of a trail of crashing dominoes put in motion by the recession, reluctant consumers and retailers. In the apparel industry, retailers have ultimate price-setting leverage with garment manufacturers, and the manufacturers in turn have the power to set prices with contractors, according to Joseph Rodriguez, executive director of the Garment Contractors Assn. of Southern California, one of three prominent contractors trade groups.
“It’s a unique industry,” Rodriguez said. “If you needed something done in your home, say, needed to hire a plumber or other contractor, you don’t set the price. They tell you how much it’s going to cost. In this industry, it’s the other way around.”
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As the retail industry went through rough times and consolidation, it put pressure on manufacturers to lower prices.
Leonard Rabinowitz, co-chairman of Carole Little, said that as retailers cut their costs by reducing the number of their garment suppliers, his company “had no choice but to reduce the number of contractors” it used.
“You’re a survivor or you’re not,” Rabinowitz said, explaining that his company got stronger by selecting contractors that could meet higher standards for efficiency and production.
According to Rodriguez, “Manufacturers who have a choice of dealing with domestic contractors or overseas contractors . . . will create pressure on the domestic contractor. So the contractor is hardly ever in a position to say, ‘This is my price for a garment, this is the price of labor.’ ”
But even as manufacturers are demanding more from the contractors, federal and state regulators are clamping down on businesses that violate wage, health and safety regulations.
Carole Little was asked by federal enforcement officials last year to monitor one of its contractors that had been found to be in violation of wage laws.
That contractor, Pobeda Enterprises of Glendale, last month paid a $22,000 fine imposed by the Labor Department for overtime pay violations. Pobeda is also under investigation by state labor authorities.
Industry insiders say GAHA and Pobeda, which does about $2 million in annual business with Carole Little, are among the major competitors for business with the garment maker.
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Yeong J. Kim, owner of Design Centre Inc. and a contractor in Downtown Los Angeles’ garment district for 15 years, says he has never seen relations between contractors and manufacturers as strained as they are today. Kim said he understands the pressure facing garment manufacturers from imports and regulations, but he believes the manufacturers are coming down too hard on contractors.
“They want to control the contractor like it’s their own facility,” said Kim, who works for only two manufacturers. He says the others make unreasonable demands.
Trade groups advise their members not to become too dependent on one manufacturer. That happens all too often, however. Loss of the manufacturer means loss of the business--a high-stakes gamble that contractors all too frequently lose.
“Some people are willing to do almost anything to get those contracts,” said one official who asked not to be identified.
Emmalena Bland, owner of Salt & Pepper Sales at the California Mart, hopes that isn’t so. “I think the incidents are isolated--and I hope they’re isolated,” she said.
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Staff writers Don Lee, Jeff Brazil and Vicki Torres contributed to this report.
