Returning Home to the US 1968

After working in South East Asia for 2 plus years it was time to come home. I wanted to expand my career horizons and my children needed to re-establish themselves in their home culture. It was a bit of an adventure for every member of our family. Our youngest daughter had been born in Hong Kong. She was so she was 21 months old when we returned home. My wife and I had a plan that involved my bringing our baby home to the US during a trip back to New York for a job interview. Our plan worked out well as I was hired as the Import Manager for an American apparel manufacturer in New York. Having secured the position, I left the baby in the  care of my wife's mother in Queens, NY and returned to Hong Kong and resigned as Assistant Manager of the Macy Hong Kong office. I left R.H. Macy after almost 10 years of service. My three older children had an adventure flying home from HK by themselves. This plan allowed my wife and I to fly back to the states while taking a needed vacation in Bangkok, Thailand, Copenhagen, Denmark and London in the UK. After all that said it was just good to be home.

Overseas Experience Pays Off

Because of my experience in the Orient, I was offered the position of Import Manager for a mid-size US apparel firm that operated several divisions manufacturing products for Men, Women and Children. This assignment was to develop, purchase and import apparel items that could be sold with the firm's brands. These products would then be sold by the company through its sales reps on a national basis. Since this firm's executives were not familiar with this process at all, I spend a great deal of time educating management as to what could be reasonably expected from this type of operation. There were significant differences between sourcing fabrics from US producers and Far Eastern fabric suppliers. US fabric manufacturers usually offered a preset line of products with many items available from stock with short term delivery. Japanese or HK producers operated on a made to order basis with much longer lead times. In the Orient, the buyer was expected to be knowledgeable about various types of fabric construction and finishes. This type of information was well guarded by the US producers and the buyers were expected to rely on the manufacturers expertise. Therefore my textile knowledge was very useful when we attempted to duplicate certain domestically made fabrics in the Orient. The same was true of apparel assembly (sewing) techniques. Factories in higher labor cost regions such as the US used more automated methods that relied on large quantity batch runs while the Far Eastern sewers were much more flexible and could perform many more fine detail types of construction. this was a great opportunity for me as I was learning about the US methods at the same time as teaching US producers the ways of the Orient.

Moving from the Retail side to Manufacturing and Wholesale Distribution

Retailers that sell to consumers have a different mind set than manufacturers and wholesale importers that sell to the retailer. Companies that sell to retailers source or produce in larger quantities of fewer items. Retailers rely on a fairly large number of these suppliers and can therefore offer their retail customers a larger assortment of product offerings. When importing directly for a retailer you must please the retail store buyers as they make most of the purchase decisions. When importing for a manufacturer/wholesaler you must primarily please that firm's sales force. The sales force of these firms has a lot of influence because they must be convinced of the value of what their firm is offering in order to sell more successfully.  Also many manufacturer/wholesalers offer their customers more freedom in the quantities and assortments because they may be selling to smaller retailers so the inventory is keep in what is called open stock as opposed to case packs. With open stock the items are stored individually so that a customer can select individual sizes and colors. With case packs, the items are stored in pre-assorted cartons and the buyer must accept the assortment pre-determined by the supplier.

Learning both sides of the Distribution Channel

When working for the large retail international buying organization I had very few dealings with warehouse management although I did learn a great deal about ocean shipping and air freight. These areas combined are today usually referred to as logistics and combined customs brokerage make up import operations. Now I was learning how they all had to work together in order to get the product from the producer to consumer as quickly, inexpensively and smoothly as possible. During these years I learned about "(supply chain management)" before that term even existed. During these years new technologies such as "(containerization)" were used to improve the movement of goods around the world. During the time I was living in HK, the first container port had begun construction. Open this link to view South China Morning Post article dated June 21, 1967 referring to their (new container port).