Anaheim-based Alstyle Apparel is a workhorse of a clothing maker.
Alstyle makes about half a million T-shirts a day. Its knitting and dying operations, one of the largest under one roof in the U.S., consumes 1.6 million to 1.8 million pounds of cotton per week, according to President Todd Scarborough.
“We are a commodity driven organization,” he said.
Alstyle makes blank T-shirts, hats, sweatshirts and other items, which other clothing companies use as the basis for their products, slapping on logos, designs and even jewelry, glitter and lace. Alstyle also sells clothes under its own labels.
The company’s plant is humming 24 hours a day, six days a week to fill orders. Customers range from surfwear makers, such as Huntington Beach-based Quiksilver Inc., to sporting goods stores, including Champ’s and Footlocker, and sportswear powerhouses, such as Nike Inc. and Reebok International Ltd.
The company also does work for professional baseball, football and golf leagues.
Challenges come from several corners.
Like other local apparel makers, Alstyle has been smacked by the soaring cost of gas and electricity, not to mention insurance costs for healthcare and workers’ compensation.
It also faces pressure from competitors in Latin America, China and other Asian countries, which sell T-shirts at rock bottom prices.
For now, Alstyle plans to stick to Orange County, Scarborough said.
“As all this stuff continues to increase we have to continue to evaluate what we have to do to remain competitive,” he said.
The company stays competitive by running lean and efficient,and investing in equipment, according to Scarborough. And it’s shifted some workers to low-cost areas.
Alstyle has 3,650 workers at several operations, including plants in Anaheim, Chicago and Atlanta. Some 1,000 workers are in OC, down from an estimated 1,600 several years back.
Alstyle trimmed workers in 2002 after shifting sewing work from Anaheim and Chicago. The company moved the work to Mexico plants in Ensenada and Hermosillo, Scarborough said.
But Alstyle’s knitting, dying and distribution has stayed here,and is set to ramp up.
Production Increasing
In January, Alstyle plans to increase its local production by about 8% to 625,000 T-shirts a day as part of a bid to grow sales under Midlothian, Texas-based Ennis Inc., Scarborough said.
Alstyle may add workers, but Scarborough said it’s too soon to tell how many.
Ennis bought Alstyle last year from Chicago-based Centrum Acquisition Inc., which had acquired the company a year earlier.
Until then, Alstyle was run by Rauf Gajiani, a Pakastani immigrant who started the company with Amin Ghaffar Amdani in 1976. Gajiani has since gone on to launch RZR Enterprises, a real estate development company.
In the past, Alstyle kept a low profile, rarely giving press interviews. The company’s reticence stems from a bad experience in 1996.
Back then, state and federal investigators and journalists from NBC’s “Dateline” converged on several OC factories Alstyle had at the time.
The bid to root out alleged “sweatshop” conditions proved an embarrassing blunder for those behind the raid. Investigators found small violations of federal workplace rules. Otherwise, Alstyle’s pay and working conditions proved solid by industry standards.
Scarborough said Alstyle maintains an “open door policy” with its customers, who can inspect the facilities at any point.
“It’s important to build an organization that’s socially compliant,” Scarborough said. “All major retailers have an obligation to their customers to supply product that is sweatshop free” and comes from a plant with “good working conditions.”
Parent Ennis, which makes business forms and marketing displays, said it was looking to expand into apparel to help diversify,and boost,sales.
“The business forms environment has been a declining market for the last several years,” Scarborough said.
But advertising through T-shirts, sticky notes and other forms is hot, he said.
“Apparel becomes an advertising billboard,” he said. “There’s all kinds of ways to bring apparel into (Ennis’) business.”
Take Blockbuster Inc., one of Ennis’ customers. Ennis already makes movie rental displays for Blockbuster and now also could make its employee shirts, Scarborough said.
Plans for Brands
In the meantime, Alstyle is working on growing its own line of clothing brands, including AAA, Murina, Tennessee River, Diamond Star, Gaziani and Classic by Alstyle.
The company plans to launch a line of golf clothes aimed at golf pro shops including shirts, pants and windbreakers, Scarborough said.
Plans also call for expanding Alstyle’s hat lines and T-shirt fabrics and relaunching distribution in the United Kingdom in January or February, he said.
Alstyle dropped its U.K. business two years ago because it wasn’t happy with its former distributor, Scarborough said.
Scarborough is leading the new guard at Alstyle. He comes from the company’s Chicago office, where he was vice president of marketing. He became president last November, replacing Roger Brown, who now is a consultant to the company.
Scarborough, who spent 20 years in apparel and started out in a family business, moved to OC in January.
His focus: helping Alstyle transition to Wall Street’s demands as part of publicly traded Ennis.
“When you’re public you’ve got to provide value to the shareholders,” Scarborough said. “They want something that’s going to do better than a savings account. We’ve been able to do that.”
The company’s sales were $230 million last year. The bulk of its revenue is from U.S. T-shirt sales.
Alstyle’s sales were $133 million for the six-month period ended Aug. 31.
The company has tried to lower its raw material costs and bought some $6 million of new equipment to improve efficiency.
But Scarborough said he credits a lot of the growth to Alstyle’s workers.
“It’s important to have great quality employees,” he said. “If you build an organization around great people, they take care of things.”
