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Producing equipment that is newer, better and faster for today's apparel industry is a constant challenge for the pressing and finishing segment.
As customers continue to move manufacturing offshore, pressing and finishing companies face the dual challenge of offering the most efficient equipment in locations where training and maintenance are minimal, and where the competition is often low-cost, manual labor.
But manual pressing and finishing doesn't hack it for many apparel categories. "The [offshore] market - specifically the Caribbean and Latin America - is going with more state-of-the-art equipment," says Jeff Rabinowitz, national sales manager at Hoffman/New Yorker in Bloomfield, N. J., which offers clients newer pressing equipment with microprocessing controls that require little or no maintenance. "We're designing to be very user-friendly," he says. "Through a lot of interfacing with microprocessor controls and easier programming, we can give the customer more product information than previously available."
John Downie, sales manager at Veit Brisay in Winder, Ga., concurs. "We are producing very high-end, versatile equipment for pressing and finishing men's tailored clothing and upscale womenswear, and it is being heavily bought for offshore manufacturing," he says. "We just returned from Mexico City's Expo Costura show, where we did very well."
In this niche market, Dick Hughes, vice president of Colmac Industries in Colville, Wash., sees offshore production as a Catch 22. "We produce highly automated equipment," he says, "and manufacturers are going offshore where labor is less costly, and manual operations are economical enough that there is no justification for automated equipment. When...