Posted on 08/21/2003 1:08:29 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
During a 35-year career in the apparel industry, Frederick Gillette worked for seven companies before landing at Artex Knitting Mills Inc. eight years ago.
Not that he is a job-hopper.
"They all went out of business," Gillette said of his previous employers as he slipped a spool of black yarn onto a creel on one of Artex's 100 knitting machines, whose humming fills the South Jersey factory.
For Gillette, 61, and many of his colleagues who make up Artex's 90-person unionized workforce, the Westville, Gloucester County, producer of knit hats and scarves has become a refuge.
The once-powerful Philadelphia-area textile and apparel industry has lost more than 50,000 jobs over the last 30 years. All but the specialists such as Artex have been wiped out, leaving about 10,000 workers locally in the industry.
"We're a survivor," said Artex's president and co-owner, Arthur Pottash, leaning back comfortably in the company's conference room, where hundreds of hats are on display for customers.
Artex can compete profitably with imports because hats are less labor-intensive than other knitted garments, such as sweaters; it is expensive to ship bulky and lightweight hats halfway around the world; and the company can respond to worse-than-expected winter weather - an impossibility for overseas manufacturers.
"People in the right niche can make money," said David Brookstein, dean of Philadelphia University's school of textiles and materials technology.
These days, any company without a specialty that insulates it from foreign competition is likely to be in trouble.
Artex just keeps evolving with the market. It is on its third major product line since its founding in 1926 by co-owner Bernard Gerbarg's father as a producer of knitted neckties. When that business soured in the 1930s, Louis Gerbarg started making furniture trimming, Bernard Gerbarg said.
Pottash, who joined Artex in the late 1960s from Philadelphia's Rooster Ties, said the company was a big producer of knitted neckties again in the 1970s, the last time they were popular. "We could still make them if anyone wanted to buy them," Pottash said, laughing. As furniture styles changed, the trimming business fell by the wayside in the late 1980s.
Artex started knitting hats in the late 1960s. The hat business took off, leading to moves to West Conshohocken in 1969 and to an air-conditioned, 80,000-square-foot factory in Westville in 1992.
Pottash, who bought 50 percent of Artex in the late 1980s, said there were four or five good-size U.S. producers of knitted headwear. Artex, with $7 million or $8 million in revenue, may be the second-biggest, he said.
Some companies have gone from manufacturing to distribution, but "we decided to make our profit as a manufacturer not as a distributor," Pottash said. "My best selling tool is taking people through the factory where they see machines and people working instead of boxes saying 'Made in China.' "
Artex sells to a large number of distributors and wholesalers rather than directly to major retailers. Pottash said that was part of a strategy to prevent any one customer from having enough clout to put the company out of business by ratcheting down prices.
Artex's customers include Bob Broner, who runs a fourth-generation family distributor of hats and gloves in Auburn Hills, Mich. Broner said he imported 70 percent of what he sold to retailers including J.C. Penney Co. and the corner hardware store. That compares with importing 25 percent or 30 percent a decade ago.
But he still deals with Artex for three reasons: delivery time is two-thirds shorter than from China; Artex's payment terms are more flexible; and Artex handles small orders.
"If some retailer wants 24 dozen red caps, [Artex will] do it. A Chinese factory would probably need 72" dozen, Broner said.
"We do what other people won't do, and that's why we keep getting business," Pottash said. "We have developed many labor-saving devices that allow us to do that."
It takes just 10 people to run Artex's 100 operating knitting machines, which have not changed much since the 1920s, Pottash said.
"You can spend a quarter-million bucks on a computerized machine and it won't make a hat any better than this," Pottash said, pointing at a machine that was spinning eight spools of navy blue yarn into a tube that would be cut and sewn into a hat in the next room.
Some things have not changed, but Artex has automated key parts of the production process. About a decade ago, Gerbarg developed a machine that cuts the tubes of knitted material into proper lengths and doubles it up by pulling one end inside the other.
Most of the hats are sewn on machines, which trim them at the same time. More labor goes into packaging the goods than making them, Pottash said.
Back in the knitting room, John Graffigna keeps Artex's battalion of machines running by scavenging parts from spares bought from bygone firms.
Graffigna, 67, started with M&M Knitting Mills in 1958 and then moved to Devon Apparel. They both closed down after he had put in 15 years. He is at that point with Artex, and he plans to stay a good long time. "I never quit."
Contact staff writer Harold Brubaker at 215-854-4651 or hbrubaker@phillynews.com.
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