Chinese imports take toll on apparel.

Now that the jeans, T-shirts and socks are arriving from China in record numbers, local apparel makers are puzzling over how to stay in business.

"There's a lot fewer manufacturers out there for me to service," said Jan Rutkin, president of 39-year-old Todd Rutkin Inc., a Huntington Park apparel contractor that cuts clothing patterns and has been losing big-volume contracts to overseas producers for years.

Apparel manufacturing, once a mainstay of L.A. County's economy, has been struggling for years, as production moves to countries with cheaper labor. The ones that remain are mostly specialized contractors delivering quick turnarounds on high-fashion apparel or providers of ancillary functions, such as cutting and sewing.

Local contractors say they won't realize the full impact of the Jan. 1 end of quotas for another few months, but so far the numbers are telling. Imports of Chinese textiles jumped 33.6 percent in January to $1.05 billion--numbers so high that U.S. producers are lobbying for new protections. Even China has imposed its own tax to restrain exports.

Meanwhile, the U.S. apparel and textile industries lost 12,200 jobs this year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Los Angeles County, apparel manufacturing employment fell to 60,800 jobs in January, down 9.4 percent from a year ago.

Not all those lost jobs are connected with the lifting of quotas; the overall trend towards overseas manufacturing has been decimating U.S. manufacturers for years. Since January 2001, 28.2 percent of all apparel jobs in L.A. County have disappeared.

Many of the jobs lost in the past year have resulted from contractors shutting down in anticipation of competition with offshore producers for big retailers like WallMart Stores Inc. and Target Corp., and big-label clothing manufacturers like Nike Inc.

Joe Rodriguez, chairman of the Los Angeles-based Garment Contractors Association, said several of his members, mostly small, cutting-and-sewing contractors, shut down in 2004 in anticipation of the end of quotas.

"We've lost about half our membership in the last two years," Rodriguez said. "We've been losing apparel jobs for many years, and that trend certainly won't be helped by the end of quotas."

He added that many manufacturers and retailers that transferred production to Mexico several years ago are now moving to China. "Prices are still terrible," he said. "Contractors can't make a living. They're canceling their leases and selling their equipment."

Last year, California Joy Inc. in Glendale and Alegio Fashions Inc. in Gardena, contractors that made women's swimwear and dancewear, both shut down. G.S. Dunbar Inc., a 26,000-square-foot contractor in Montebello that employed about 185 people and produced 1.5 million units annually, and New Chock's Enterprises, a knitwear contractor with about 100 employees in a 17,000-square-foot facility downtown, closed as well.

For workers, the impact has been more cumulative than abrupt. Work in the low-paying industry has always been unstable, since contractors continually expand or contract--or even shut down--to meet changing demand, said Kimi Lee, director of director of the Los Angeles-based Garment Worker Center.

"We've been feeling a slow process of people moving production overseas for years," Lee said. "Most shops are 15 to 20 people, so for them to close up for a few weeks due to bad business is not unusual. Yes, it's a big deal, but the reality for these workers is not necessarily going to be different."

Getting by

What's keeping local contractors like Jan Rutkin afloat is the ability to turn high-quality orders around very quickly to keep pace with low-priced, seasonally changing fashions.

"Most of the contractors here in Southern California, are in the mid- to better-priced sewing for companies such as Karen Kane," said Bruce Burton, an international business consultant for Stonefield Josephson Accountancy Corp., an apparel consulting finn. "So most of them will not be directly affected by the end of quotas because they need quick response."

Chris Stone Inc., a home fabrics dying plant in Vernon, is one of the few companies that may benefit from the end of quotas because it will be able to import cheaper fabric.

Andrea Bernstein, director of marketing and merchandising, said the larger problem may be with manufacturers and retailers sending not just production offshore, but sidestepping related functions by dealing directly with foreign plants that provide everything from design to cutting and sewing.

"There's a very large contingency of suppliers from India, Pakistan, Vietnam and China, all prepared to help you take your sketch through to the finished product," Bernstein said.

Rutkin said the 40,000-square-foot cutting facility that her father started would have gone out of business years ago if the family hadn't invested in the automation that allows the plant to turn orders around in a matter of days.

"We could never afford to do it now," Rutkin said. "We first purchased a computer-aided design system to draw the cutting patterns. Then starting about 1992, we bought four automated cutters, the last one about five years ago."

The investments, then about $250,000 per machine, were made starting about 15 years ago when the company regularly received orders for 20,000 T-shirts from J.C. Penney Co. and other department stores.

About four years ago, Rutkin said she started to see those big orders dwindle as manufacturers, seeking to lower costs, sent production to foreign plants that began making higher quality items faster. Her plant, which at its peak had a workforce of 150 during day shifts and 50 at night, now employs about 60.

Rutkin's business is still hurting. Her volume over 2004 was about 20 percent lower than in 2003, and the plant laid off some workers again this year. She still receives the rare large order that requires immediate turn around or uses domestic fabric and so can't be sourced overseas. In January she got an order for 20,000 units.

However, the company's bread-and-butter is now the small orders, mostly from new, small, local companies that keep emerging to replace the ones that go under.

"A lot of the up-and-coming manufacturers aren't big enough to go offshore," Rutkin said. "And you really have to know what you're doing to send your production overseas."