Moving apparel manufacturing from Asia to the West faces significant challenges related to labor availability. Joe Foster, cofounder of Reebok, stated that it is virtually impossible to transition production quickly due to a lack of workers who are willing to operate sewing machines for long hours in the UK and the US. He emphasized that automation in manufacturing complicated products, like sneakers, is still underdeveloped. Consequently, Reebok and similar brands will continue producing in the Far East for the foreseeable future.
If you want millions, as we wanted, millions of products, you've got to go somewhere where you've got a lot of people who are quite willing to sit on a machine, women on the sewing machines, men on the production line, and that doesn't happen overnight.
In the UK, we can't get people to do that. They won't do it, they've moved on to whatever different things, and I think the States are exactly the same.
To move manufacturing West, a faster method of making shoes with robots and automation is needed. But automation for complicated sneakers, which have more than a hundred pieces, was difficult.
The industry had not progressed to that stage, and the apparel and footwear business was going to be in the Far East for a long time.
Collection
[
|
...
]