Last year, holiday imports overwhelmed the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

This year, staggered operating hours, larger ships and more dockworkers have allowed the local ports to handle record amounts of goods with aplomb.

It’s the other side of the Pacific that’s feeling the strain.

The boom in goods leaving China has strained ship space there, so apparel manufacturers are sourcing more production to other Asian countries such as Thailand and India.

Those locales, however, are farther away, and add a week or two to ocean shipping. With much of the cut pieces used in those countries coming from China anyway, the benefits of shifting production to another country are limited.

So manufacturers are increasingly shipping by air.

Marco DeGeorge, co-president of Commerce-based Color Image Apparel Inc., which produces Bella brand young women’s contemporary clothes, said he relies on air freight for last-minute orders or shipments of small lightweight items because of the long shipping time from Asian countries.

“If you ship things from China, it takes two and a half weeks, and from India it takes 30 days,” DeGeorge said. “If you might lose a sale, you have to use air. The customer won’t wait.”

DeGeorge said his company does about half its production of fleece pants and knitted ribbed tops overseas, mostly in Asia, and ships about 5 percent of it into the U.S. by air. He said he increased his reliance on air freight as he shifted more production overseas.

“With domestic production, if you had to get something to a client immediately, you could have it made really fast,” said DeGeorge. “Now, once you’ve got so much of your production overseas, you rely more on air freight.”

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The full story

is available in the Oct. 10 edition of the Business Journal.