Novelty T-Shirt Washes Bring American Dye House Back to Its Roots
Lined up on a table in American Dye House’s showroom are T-shirts representing its evolution as a company. Cropped ’80s tie-dye T-shirts and acid-wash-style treatments lie side by side with the colorful and sun-bleached washes in the company’s current arsenal. Joe Ryan, American’s vice president of business development, has big plans for the T-shirts. “We’re going to frame them and put them in our new building, hall-of-fame style.” T-shirts are unlikely wall deacute;cor for a company known for its premium-denim pedigree, but American is in the middle of a reinvention that draws upon its deepest roots.
Founded in 1999 by Isaac Vanunu as a garment-dye facility, Los Angeles–based American Dye switched its focus in 2003 to premium-denim washes and in 2005 gave up on garment dye altogether. During that time, thanks to Vanunu’s innovative denim washes and dry processes, American outgrew its old facility and moved its operations across the street to a 60,000-square-foot facility, where it developed specialty denim treatments for brands such as Joe’s Jeans, Hudson, Earnest Sewn, True Religion, Rock & Republic and 7 For All Mankind. The original 40,000-square-foot facility stood empty until now.
Slated to open in mid-July, the newly refurbished facility will be dedicated solely to the development and production of novelty wash treatments for T-shirts and knits. Denim processes and development will remain in their current location. Representing a homecoming in more than one way, the newly refurbished dye house is both a former stomping ground and an incubator for future growth.
“People know us now for our premium-denim washes and development, but we are innovators in the garment-dye industry,” said Adam Vanunu, who took over the company in 2009 after his father, Isaac, passed away. Prior to launching American Dye, Isaac Vanunu owned several garment-dye operations, including Wash Express and Color by Color, in the ’80s and ’90s.
Last year American saw an opportunity in novelty T-shirt washes and introduced washes the elder Vanunu had developed in 2007. “It took a while to get traction, but the response last year was great and our novelty wash business has exploded,” said Adam Vanunu. While American’s denim business stays strictly in the upper echelon, its novelty wash business is broad, touching the premium, mid-tier and mass-market categories. “We do everything from Rock & Republic’s T-shirts to K-Mart,” Ryan said. Action-sports brands, streetwear brands and Christian Audigier’s new line, The Same Guy, are also part of American’s knitwear client roster.
In its current facility, American employs 150 individuals and must divide its capacity between denim and T-shirts. On any given day, American can wash 10,000 pairs of jeans or 10,000 T-shirts. In less than one year, demand for novelty wash T-shirts has nearly matched demand for premium denim, Adam Vanunu said. “And we think demand is going to continue to grow—that’s why we’re opening an additional facility,” he added. Stocked with new machines and manned by 40 employees, the knitwear facility will have an estimated capacity of 30,000 pieces per week.
American Dye’s denim business will also benefit from the new facility. Moving knits to their own facility will free up machines for additional denim jobs, allowing American Dye to take on more small clients that, in the past, were passed over in favor of big orders from larger brands, Adam Vanunu said. “Many wash houses have closed and start-ups and small brands need someone to help them. We started out helping brands grow, and it will be nice to do that again.”
The younger Vanunu points to his late father’s passion for product development as the reason for American Dye’s success. “Most laundries don’t develop their own washes; they re-create what others have done. We’re not just a wash house. We develop all of our own washes, and we help brands develop an identity and grow,” he said. Adam Vanunu carries on his father’s tradition and develops all of American’s new novelty knit washes himself. “I grew up in the business. All of my learning was hands-on.” One of the younger executives in the denim industry, Adam Vanunu has the added benefit of being part of the premium denim and T-shirt demographic. “We know the market, we know the buyer, we know what’s going on season to season. All of this helps us with our product development,” he said.
For Fall 2010, American Dye developed destroyed T-shirts with lots of faded tones and hand-grinding for its upscale clients and more simple vintage washes for mass-market clients. “Everyone is going for vintage, destroyed, military looks across the board,” Ryan said. Along that same vein, traditionally denim clients are incorporating twill, canvas and corduroy into their collections.
