California Apparel News

If the people seated inside the large hotel ballroom looked as if they were speed dating, in a way they were.

Some 105 apparel and textile companies from Colombia met with 78 U.S. sourcing managers in a matchmaking event organized by Proexport Colombia at The Langham Huntington hotel in Pasadena, Calif., and held Nov. 8–9. 

The idea was to educate U.S. manufacturers about how they could take advantage of the new free-trade agreement that went into effect May 15 between Colombia and the United States. 

Seated at one of several tables set up inside the ornate ballroom, two Target Corp. buyers based in Guatemala were checking out opportunities for knitwear. Not far away, two Calvin Klein buyers were exploring their options to produce more goods in Colombia to widen their sourcing venues.

Lindsay Vincent, director of sourcing and development for Simms Fishing, a company in Bozeman, Mont., that makes fishing gear and clothing, was seeking new factories to make some of the company’s knit sportswear and was looking for companies that do sublimation.

“It is so advantageous to come to one location and meet all these companies in one sitting and to have people come to you,” said Vincent, who was impressed by the setup, where buyers remained at one table and every 40 minutes there was a new meeting with an apparel, textile or accessories company.

She said after meeting with various companies, she will be doing costing exercises because she is interested in producing apparel in Colombia. “We could start development in March, and then the earliest collection we could produce would be for Spring 2015,” she explained.

With the new free-trade agreement, all apparel and textiles made of regional yarns or short-supply fabric are duty free when shipped between the two countries, which is a considerable cost savings when you consider that synthetic apparel is subject to a
32 percent tariff. 

For years, Colombia was a member of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, a trade-preference system that gave Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia duty-free status for most apparel traded between the United States and the region. But recently, the ATPDEA program had to be renewed every year by Congress, which sometimes was late in doing so.

Because of the uncertainty, several U.S. apparel manufacturers opted not to continue sourcing in Colombia. 

That had a significant effect on ventures such as C.I. Denim Factory in Cali, Colombia. The factory’s general manager, Antonio Lozano, who was at the matchmaking event, said C.I. Denim used to produce 500,000 pairs of pants and other clothing for U.S.-based Perry Ellis International. But in 2008 the uncertainty of the ATPDEA made Perry Ellis source outside of Colombia.

C.I. Denim, which has its own design department and does garment dyeing for its fashion-forward apparel, is trying to recuperate the 40 percent loss in revenues it has seen in the last four years. 

The company is promoting its proximity to the United States and the free-trade agreement to move forward.

“I’m looking for opportunities to expand our business in Los Angeles,” Lozano said, noting he already sources for Jimmy Taverniti and IQ Shirts.

This was the first matchmaking event in Los Angeles organized by Proexport Colombia, the government group in charge of boosting exports, said Sylvia Reyes, Proexport Colombia’s textile and apparel director for the United States. 

In June, a similar matchmaking round was held at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York.

Other business forums have been held in Miami, Dallas and Houston, and Proexport also does seminars at MAGIC in Las Vegas and participates in the CurveNV lingerie trade show.

“Since 1900, our apparel and textile industry has been totally vertical,” Reyes said, noting that Colombia has a long history of making fabric and clothing for South America and other regions. 

And there is a history of collaboration between U.S. and Colombian textile companies. In 2003, Parkdale Mills in North Carolina partnered with the Crystal Group in Medellin, Colombia, to build a cotton yarn–spinning mill that has been running at full capacity since its inception. Crystal uses the yarn to make socks, knit shirts and other goods.

“We are doing a lot of things to tell California and the United States how important this free-trade agreement is for us all,” Reyes said.—Deborah Belgum