The textile industry in America has been looking rather bleak for quite some time now. With international outsourcing being significantly cheaper there have been over 650 textile plant closures in the United States since the late 1990’s alone. However most of these offshore plants have been located in developing countries such as China, a nation enjoying growth in their middle class population. This, along with rising concerns for ethical work environments, has pushed up costs such as labor that originally attracted the textile industries to the far east.
Not only has that encouraged desertion to lesser-developed countries but also it is slightly tipping the pendulum back towards staying at home for some companies such as ‘American Giant’ of Gaffney, S.C.. But apart from labor costs, what else contributes to the higher expense of operation here than that of other countries? Supply chain and distribution costs often gets looked at last, this article examines some cost cutting measures to perhaps entice the textile sector to remain, reshore back to the USA.
Warehousing and distribution can be an overhead worth outsourcing to a solid third party logistics partner such as Westset Logistics. At Westset, storage and materials handling is a core business, efficiencies in various stacking to fulfillment processes have been fine tuned depending on the product type and sector. Having fine tuned stacking long rolls of vinyl, Westset Logistics has established a ready-made model for the textile sector…offering significant costs savings.
It starts with the experience built up over years fine tuning racking configurations, stacking options for long rolls and odd sizes, pallet identification, cloud based inventory management systems, alongside order fulfillment. On time receipt of inventory into store and order dispatch is key also, and with a transportation management system and a fleet of 90 trucks servicing SoCAL, the operation offers substantial advantages for any textile industry to flourish on the West Coast of the USA.
Another major benefit of rendering Westset’s third party logistics capabilities is
the textile company’s reduction in liabilities in the face of changing market trends. With the flexibility to respond quickly to changing business environments there is no tension when seasonal periods fluctuate between volume peaks and uneven demand as using Westset will maximize efficiency. Therefore, with no liabilities to incur due to the disruption of the distribution operations, a textile plant will be skimping on unnecessary costs due to having unutilized space.
With California’s proximity to Mexico and making use of NAFTA, raw materials such as cotton can be purchased there at a low cost per unit and at a low cost of transport to compete with the textile industry of the South.
Perhaps then, as well as the focus the textile plants can place on their core competencies, utilization of Westset’s vast economy of scale and network and the reduction in liability being offered, and it’s proximity to Mexico, California could add some more incentives to swing the pendulum further back to bringing the textile industry to the West Coast. Through tax breaks, reliable utilities, dependable, qualified workforce and suitability of ports ‘USA Today’ reports the re-rising of the textiles industries in the South. Though Westset has the 3PL capability for significantly enhancing the operability of a textile plant and should be alluring in and of its own, the true potential of South California’s textile environment is stifled without state, county or city policy incentives. Consequently, growth, if any at all, will endure at a crawl even though Westset could very plausibly be a prominent actor in bringing textile industry to California.
For more information on how Westset Logistics can offer superior California 3PL Services