California Apparel News

Online sourcing has become an increasingly popular way to connect retailers and brands with overseas factories and suppliers. A new resource, MFGtextiles.com, hopes to bring another element of the online world to the apparel and textile industries.

MFGtextiles.com is a spinoff of MFG.com, which claims to be the largest global online manufacturing resource in the world.

Former textile executive Tony Forcucci is the new global director of MFG Textiles and is based in Atlanta. He was at the Los Angeles International Textile Show recently and presented a sourcing seminar for Fashion Business Inc.

“We don’t come from fashion. We come from sourcing,” he said as he explained some of the differences between MFG and its competitors, such as Alibaba.com, Panshy;jiva.com and AllWorldSourcing.com. “It’s fish vs. fishermen. You don’t sit around waiting for someone to contact you.”

MFG was started about eight years ago by founder Mitch Free as a resource for aviation and aerospace manufacturers. The site quickly grew to become a key resource for those industries. Forcucci said 70 percent of the parts for the Mars Rover were sourced on the site. Another customer was Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, who also is the owner of Blue Origin, a privately funded sub-orbital spacecraft.

Bezos became so enthralled with MFG.com that he became a major investor along with Fidelity Investments, which gave $26 million to the company, Forcucci said. With that kind of backing, Free was ready to take the site to the next level and launch the textiles site with Forcucci.

The site is free to buyers. Manufacturers and suppliers pay an annual subscription that is between $6,000 and $10,000.

The site is transaction-based. It’s not simply a directory like other sites, Forcucci said.

“It’s Web 2.0 compared to Web 1.0,” he noted.

The system works to match buyers’ design and production requirements with a factory’s capability and capacity levels. The Web-based technology allows factories to specify what types of jobs they are interested in and helps match their expertise with ideal buyer opportunities. Suppliers each get a multimedia Web page that allows them to tell their stories.

Factories set up RFQ (request for quotes) filters stating their areas of expertise, capacities and other criteria. Buyers create online RFQs with specs and are instantly matched with a list of suppliers. The buyers invite companies to bid, and once they receive those bids, they can analyze them and, finally, award the bids.

All of the quotes are in an “apples-to-apples” format and can be exported into software such as Microsoft Excel.

Free said the site has already garnered more than $1 billion in RFQs since its quiet launch earlier this year.

More than 15,000 textile buyers and factories are currently registered on the site. So far, buyers have included sourcing managers, apparel buyers, interior designers, fashion and footwear designers, and those purchasing home textiles or industrial textiles, Free said.

Like eBay, MFGtextiles offers a forum for buyers and sellers to grade each other. “It auto-polices itself. Everything is traceable. We’re taking a platform that works [from MFG.com] and bringing it to textiles,” Forcucci said.

He added that the site is being used for lead generation as well as for producing tech packs. “It can help you rethink your business,” he said.

Forcucci said the company offers “test runs” and other ways to evaluate the system. It has offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. —Robert McAllister