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FsslerUSA: Lessons in Adaptation

FesslerUSA: Lessons in Adapatation

FesslerUSA Knits Plan for Big Growth

Make an appointment with a FesslerUSA Rep at one of these 2008 shows

March 9,10,11 : Children's Club - Javits, NYC www.enkshows.com

April 8,9,10 : Material World - Miami Beach Convention Center - Miami, FL www.material-world.com   Exibitor Booth # 608

May 5,6,7 : Intermezzo Collections - Piers 92 & 94 - New York City, NY www.enkshows.com

July 21, 22,23 - Project NY Summer '08 - Javits - New York City, NY www.projectshow.com

August 3,4,5 : Intermezzo Collections - Javits - New York City, NY www.enkshows.com

August 3,4,5 : Children's Club - Pier 94 - New York City, NY www.enkshows.com

August 7,8,9,10 : Outdoor Retailer/Summer - Salt Lake City, UT www.outdoorretailer.com

August 25,26,27 : Project Las Vegas Summer '08 - The Sands Expo - Las Vegas, NV www.projectshow.com

August 25, 26, 27 : Magic Marketplace - Las Vegas Convention Center and Las Vegas Hilton - Las Vegas, NV www.magiconline.com

September 16,17,18 : Coterie - Piers / Javits - New York City, NY www.enkshows.com

October 5,6,7 : Children's Club - Javits - New York City, NY www.enkshows.com

Call 1-800-253-2924 today to schedule an appointment with a FesslerUSA rep or email sales@fesslersusa.com

FesslerUSA: sticking to your knitting

FesslerUSA Builds on its century-old legacy by adding the Design Support Group
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When you’ve been around more than 100 years, chances are you’ve earned your longevity by adapting successfully to changing times. So it is with FesslerUSA, the venerable Pennsylvania-based vertical knit manufacturer, specializing in fabric and garment production of fashion knit tees.

Founded in 1900 when young Walter Meck left the family farm to start a cotton-underwear business in Schuykill Haven, the company made it through the Depression, two World Wars, and, with a period under outsider ownership, the remainder of the 20th century largely intact. FesslerUSA had become a leader in the production of private-label knitwear, of particular service to customers in search of fast production for smaller quantities of custom garments.

But we’re into a whole new century now, or, as the company looks at it, FesslerUSA’s second 100 years. Globalization of garment production, emerging technologies, and trade-driven treaties such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and GATT are shifting the way manufacturers and retailers are doing business, with pressure to produce farther from home, at cheaper prices.

This new world order did not go unnoticed by FesslerUSA’s current CEO, Walter Meck—the grandson of the firm’s founder. “With the advent of NAFTA and China, we recognized that simply being a manufacturer was not enough,” Meck says. “With the turn of the new century, we needed to take a new tack.”

And that new tack is design services. FesslerUSA hired a team of young designers “on the cutting edge, recently out of school from the best schools in the country,” to man its newly formed Design Support Group.

Some 30 strong, Design Support is structured to work at any and every level of the design and production process for clients ranging from high-end department stores to the newest kid on the block who has a big idea but no manufacturing expertise. The FesslerUSA team picks up wherever the need is, even if all a client has is an idea or the barest of drawings.

“Our job,” says Meck, “is to design with the practicalities of production in mind. We bring a touch of reality to the extraordinarily creative side of design.”

FesslerUSA’s Design Support staff, with strict confidentiality, can design and produce exclusive fabrics as well as create technical drawings, prototypes, and samples that are production-ready, using the latest Gerber Silhouette system. “We’re able to tell designers that they should focus on what they do best, the creative side of design,” Meck explains, “and then we’ll take over and handle the process side of things. This way, they are able to invest less in the back room and more on the creative.”

The Design Support Group service arises from FesslerUSA’s commitment to manufacturing in Pennsylvania. “We wanted to remain 100 percent made-in-the-USA,” Meck explains. “We did market research to find out why stores want to buy made-in-the-USA. The answer to that was speed-to-market. You can buy anything in the world at a lower price, but you can’t bring it to market quickly from anywhere in the world. So we decided to be a speed-to-market company.”

And that is appropriate for an age in which the average 25-year-old woman goes into her favorite store about two and a half times per month, Meck says, “and she wants to see something different every time she walks in. We offer to our customers the ability to have a new look in their stores every two weeks.”

Meck calls this “the vision.” “At first, there were some designers and retailers who couldn’t catch the vision of how the concept could really help them,” he says. “The most progressive retailers, the most successful, understood it. They sure have caught the vision now.”

Design Support is only the latest of FesslerUSA’s well-known menu of services. With years of knit and garment-dye experience, the company offers washing, screen-printing, pressing, bagging, tagging of retail-ready garments, dyeable blanks, and bulk-sale fabric production, including certified organics. Because of its depth of experience and capabilities, FesslerUSA stays on the cutting edge of fabric development, in search always of “the perfect tee”—“a combination of lovely drape, lovely hand, soft but not too soft, slinky but not too slinky”—at a time when luxury tees are in high demand.

The addition of Design Support has been “a very good formula for us and for our customers,” Meck reports. “We’ve grown steadily. We believe in what we call ‘sustainable growth.’ We’re not looking for home runs, but doubles down the middle every time. We pick a few customers for whom we think our business model, our vision, works for them, and then we partner with them.”

And that’s how FesslerUSA plans to make it to the next century. “Every relationship with every customer is unique to their situation, their goals, their staffing. We don’t take away from what you have, we enhance it. We don’t do your job, we help you do your job better. We take the time to understand them. We don’t give quotes, we build relationships.”

FesslerUSA Corporate Offices and Fessler Sewing Facility
216 West Independence Street
P.O. Box 215
Orwigsburg, PA 17961
(800) 253-2924
(570) 366-8947 (fax)
www.fesslerusa.com

Despite decline of U.S. textile industry, several county businesses keep thriving
http://www.republicanherald.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18306942&BRD=2626&PAG=461&dept_id=529074&rfi=6

FesslerUSA featured in New York Post April 14,2007

A Cut Above the Competition - How A U.S. Clothing Maker Thrives

http://www.nypost.com/seven/04142007/postopinion/opedcolumnists/a_cut_above_the_competition_opedcolumnists_ralph_peters.htm

A visit from the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Textiles and Apparel

http://www.zwire.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17030175&BRD=2626&PAG=461&dept_id=536271&rfi=8