(War Stories) Production houses we rejected - part 2

This is the first factory we visited. 

Here was my plan.  Let’s head over to Ningbo, tour some clothing factories, and just get a general sense of the clothing manufacturing process, of factory capabilities, of what might be possible in the vague intersection of (a) the internet, (b) luxury-quality craftsmanship and (c) clothing sourced from China. 

It was a frustrating day.  You could almost say scary.  Hugely instructive.  I came away with a much more concrete sense of the let’s-offshore-to-China phenomenon.  But I had to go through torture to get it.

The first factory visit of the day was also the best.  Ms Fan met Linda and me at our hotel (that’s the front entrance, there) and drove us to…well, I can’t honestly report where she drove us to.  Somewhere in Ningbo. 

It was beautiful.  This factory was right out of the 1950s.  I couldn’t understand the name splashed over the front gates, but it likely read, ‘Ball Bearings For Motorized Wheelbarrows Of The Proletariat, Factory No. 14’.  It had that colorless gray-white ambience so favored by the interior designers of the Revolution.  Think steerage class on a turn-of-the-century steam ship, then put a gray concrete wall around it. 

Cool.

Ms Fan introduced us to the factory foreman, and we began our tour.  Work pretty much ceased when the white man (that’s me) walked onto the floor.  No, I didn’t see any child labor.  Actually, working conditions seemed to be pretty good.  Despite the humble exterior (and interior), the factory has some premium clients.  It turns out a suit for Younger (the Hugo Boss of China, essentially) in mass quantities, and on their showroom floor I spotted several racks of a well-known Canadian label, waiting to be shipped. 

‘How many suits do you produce in a year?’ I asked.  (As the day wore on, I found myself asking a lot of these interesting-but-unimportant questions – steadily coming to appreciate that I was too ignorant to ask anything relevant.)

‘Oh, we’re a pretty small operation,’ said the foreman.  ‘About 100,000.  Maybe 120,000.’  I did the math – about 300 suits a day.