Business

In the late eighty’s there was a sole proprietor of a denim retail who pondered the idea of making a company to produce high quality denim garments at a competitive price. Jack Aalf opened a facility in early 1988 in Ohio with the ideal of starting his own line of clothing which he very quickly realized was to become unsuccessful. Jack Aalf then decided to contract work for JcPenny’s Arizona brand, which began the start of many other contracts. Tommy Hilfiger, Lands Ends, even Levi Strauss would be produced in his factories. My tenure with Aalfs manufacturing was from nineteen ninety four to nineteen ninety-nine. The company at the height of its operation had seven factories. At each quarterly meeting, we would be informed of upcoming projects. Jack Aalf would talk about how much cotton it took to make a pair of pants, and other stories or facts. One particular story that comes to mind is that of a Swedish tailor who made pants that lasted so long people asked how he did it and he would respond by saying “I always put an extra stitch in each seam and never use but the best materials.” (make a reference) Aalfs for the first seven years lived by these principles until orders become larger forcing productivity to slow. Corporate faced a challenge to follow the principles of the original owner or to break from the culture it lived by and succeed to demand. Aalfs at first only allowed clothing to exit with a 90 percent quality standard but this slowly within a two year period went to eighty percent, which become the norm. The company would close its doors in two thousand and two from its own double-edged sword when our customers reported poor quality as the main reasons for pulling their contracts.