California Apparel News

On Jan. 1, Made by the Bay officially closed its doors after several attempts to obtain funding for its nonprofit organization andits operation in motion.The program that once served an integral role in the Bay Area’s apparel industry is now halting its services indefinitely, according to the program’s founder and executive director, Paul Gill.

Made by the Bay was known for its promotion of quality manufacturing in a very high labor law compliance environment. The program was created by a group of grass-roots apparel industry vets in San Francisco in 1997 to help Bay Area garment contractors maintain quality control and introduce technology to their factories. The program was also geared to help Northern California contractors remain in compliance with state labor laws and competitive in an increasingly global business.

As the program grew, the cost to maintain it grew as well. The program’s funding from the cities of San Francisco and Oakland was a combined total of about $138,000. The program also received additional funds from private donors in the Bay Area, including cash donations from local contractors. But the annual cost to maintain the program exceeded $172,000, according to Randy Harris, chairman of Made by the Bay and executive director of San Francisco Fashion Industries.

Gill and Harris said the downturn in the economy made it particularly difficult to secure funding for the program during hard times. Shifts in the local political scene also contributed to the program’s demise, according to Gill, who noted that San Francisco Supervisor Mabel Tang—one of the program’s strongest advocates—recently lost her board seat.

Oakland continued to show strong support for the program, Gill said, but noted that the city could only afford to budget $25,000 for the program—about 15 percent of the total funding needed to sustain it.

Still, there still remains a strong presence of Northern California manufacturers, including Levi Strauss & Co., Gap, Esprit, Byer California, Eber, Koret of California and Jessica McClintock.

“Right now the apparel industry in Northern California is shrinking,” Harris said. “And there’s an enormous amount of pressure on manufacturing, especially with the retail industry not doing well.”

Harris said the program’s demise was compounded by the lack of support the program received in the late ’90s during the rise of the dot-com era.It was easier to land political support for a high-wage industry like technology rather than the low-wage apparel industry, Harris added.

“We received support for the program for a number of years but it became less relevant when high-tech companies became more relevant.”

The Bay Area’s apparel industry has been hard hit in recent years, as skyrocketing rents have led some manufacturers to look elsewhere for cheaper space, and apparel jobs either dried up or moved to other cities. Apparel employment in San Francisco’s metropolitan area (including San Mateo and Marin counties) plummeted from 15,200 in November 1996 to 9,900 in November 2001.

“There are a lot of companies that are no longer in business because they couldn’t afford to stay in business in that kind of environment,” Harris said. “Not only were they under enormous financial pressure from manufacturers but they also couldn’t pay their rent.”

During the few years it operated, Made by the Bay became known as a government-friendly program because it helped contractors learn how to be financially viable.

Jerry Hall, deputy regional administrator at the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division said the program was beneficial to his department because it helped foster long-term employment within the apparel industry.

“Many of the [labor law] violations that occur are because of the financial instability at the factories,” he said.

One of the services Made by the Bay provided for its members was an independent monitoring program that allowed industry vets to work one-on-one with factory owners to reinforce compliance with labor laws. The group also developed programs for factories that helped to facilitate improvements to working conditions and provided resource information to those who were interested in further developing their businesses.

According to Harris, the program was a vital boost to the Bay Area’s compliance rate, which increased steadily from 74 percent in 1997 to 94 percent in 2001.

Made by the Bay’s board members included Patrick Cheung, chairman of Northern California Chinese Garment Contractors; Bill Singh, president of MANEX; Tim Hayes, regional manager for UNITE; Barry Wong, president of Northern California Chinese Contractors Association; Katie Quan, a labor policy specialist at the University of California, Berkeley; Richard Soyombo, director of the Center for International Trade Development; Frida Lau, Skyblue Manufacturing; and Zachary Wasserman, an attorney at Wendel, Rosen, Black & Dean.

Made by the Bay was one of only two major programs in the Bay Area serving as assistance programs for business owners in the apparel industry. The other program, MANEX (also known as Corporation for Manufacturing Excellence), is largely funded by the federal and state government in addition to private funding and continues to operate as a manufacturing extension program that provides consulting services to manufacturers at reasonable or subsidized rates.

There is no comparable program in Southern California, according to Ilse Metchek, executive director of the California Fashion Association.

“Made by the Bay’s effort to keep contractors in compliance was a noble effort,” she said. “But, the state is responsible for enforcing those laws and, unfortunately,a program like Made by the Bay has to be funded separately to ensure that.”

Gill said he isn’t sure what kind of impact the loss of his program will have on Bay Area contractors, nor what type of assistance will be offered to them in the future. He will continue to maintain the program’s corporate identity in hopes of someday resurrecting it with fresh funding.

In the meantime, Gill continues to run a consulting practice from his Berkeley, Calif., home, where he serves as an advocate for San Francisco’s apparel industry at a distance.

“Before I was an advocate for the public’s good,” he explained. “Now I’m an advocate for whomever hires me. I’m okay with that, but what I’m sorry about is that we were unable to build a constituency in Sacramento to make it a statewide program.”