In another step on the long march toward repatriating American manufacturing jobs, Tustin swimwear maker RAJ Manufacturing has just opened a factory in Santa Fe Springs.
When it hits full capacity, the 7,000-square-foot facility will be able to produce 500,000 swimsuits a year, said Alex Bhathal, co-owner and president of the 47-year-old family business.
Bhathal said the new facility, 22 miles northwest of headquarters, is in many ways in a different world. Orange County’s apparel workforce is not as abundant as Los Angeles’ and the company had already dried up the pool around headquarters and found it hard to hire in that area.
“We chose Santa Fe Springs after a fairly rigorous search,” Bhathal said. “We realized there are more experienced labor seamstresses in Los Angeles County than in Orange County.”
The company has hired 30 workers and to keep up with demand, Bhathal said he planned to hire 70 more in the next year. Increased production should boost revenue for the fiscal year ending in June by between 10 percent and 20 percent.
The additional capacity will help in that effort, he added, as the Santa Fe Springs facility will enable RAJ to cut outsourced production to just 25 percent of its output. The company now outsources more than 30 percent of its manufacturing work to factories in Mexico and China.
“The best option for the company is to own that capacity here in Southern California,” he said. “The reasons for that are the proximity to the market, the lead time and inventory management as well as quality control.”
RAJ designs and manufactures women’s and children’s swimwear, swim cover-ups, yoga and activewear. It has its own brands and exclusive license brands, but also does private label work for large retailers such as Dillard’s Inc. and Urban Outfitters Inc.
Bhathal, who said the company was one of the largest U.S. fashion swim businesses, wouldn’t disclose revenue. It employs 400 people.
Unspooling
Coast Wire & Plastic Tech Inc. wants to extend its presence beyond the West Coast.
Leading the effort for the Carson maker of custom electronic cable and wire is David Ibanez, who was just hired as chief operating officer. The company has also brought in three new territory managers to cover the Southeast, Northeast and Midwest markets.
Before joining Coast Wire earlier this month, Ibanez was vice president of operations at San Diego contract manufacturer Veridiam Inc., which serves the medical, nuclear, aerospace, dental and industrial markets. In addition to overseeing sales and marketing, he will be supervising production and quality control.
Ibanez said Coast Wire, which manufactures custom wire and cable products for medical, instrumentation and commercial electronics clients, had only focused on sales to West Coast clients. The new hires will allow it to reach the entire domestic market, especially untapped businesses in the Midwest and on the East Coast.
To that end, he will oversee improvements to the company’s marketing strategy, including building a new website, developing a new ad program and representing the company in trade shows.
“We didn’t have a clear, consistent value proposition or message that we were delivering,” he said. “It was kind of each salesperson just did their own thing. Now we are really trying to say who we are. … We want everyone to deliver the same message.”
The company will also invest $1.5 million in upgrading facilities to increase capacity as well as efficiency next year. The upgrade will include introduction of a new manufacturing resource planning system, which he said will allow the company to better keep track of supply and demand, cash flow, delivery and manufacturing plans.
Coast Wire was purchased by London private equity firm Nova Capital Manage-ment in October of last year from industrial group Latshaw Enterprises Inc. of Wichita, Kan. Nova specializes in buying small companies it believes underperform under larger parent companies.
Engineering Expansion
Calnetix Technologies, a component maker for industrial manufacturers in the aerospace, automotive, defense and medical industries, has put its hiring mechanism into high gear.
The company, which specializes in providing energy-efficient components for industrial manufacturers, increased its employment from 79 to 123 this year, and will keep hiring at that pace, according to Vatche Artinian, co-founder and chief executive.
Calnetix, founded in 1998, has more engineers than assembly workers. About half of the people hired this year are engineers, and that will be an ongoing area of recruitment.
The Cerritos company, which manufactures products based on customer specs and carries no inventory, makes turbines, blood pumps, and air and gas compressors.
Artinian said the business has been growing at an average rate of 35 percent during the last three years as manufacturers are looking to improve energy efficiency. The company also announced a new patent for a sensor last week, its seventh patent since 2002. He said revenue is greater than $50 million.
Staff reporter Kay Chinn can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 237.
