Posted December 7, 2016
By Devin Steele (DSteele@eTextileCommunications.com)
MONROE, N.C. – Vanguard, celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, has taken a bold step to put itself on the cutting edge of the U.S. and hemispheric return of textiles and apparel manufacturing.
Which is unique, considering that this industry leadership is coming from a machinery manufacturing company and not a retailer, brand or mill.
In fact, family-owned Vanguard is one of the only U.S. knitting machine manufacturers remaining and, with its partnership with Taiwan-based Pai Lung, says it is the largest knitting manufacturer in the world with the most extensive product offering with 84 types of machines.
The company, working with partners, has developed a radically new initiative aimed at bringing knowledge and technology back to the Western Hemisphere, generally speaking. Specifically, the goal is to help brands, designers and manufacturers, through education and technical expertise, develop innovative fabric technologies that transform end results.
Enter “Wildfire,” the name of this hot new concept.
eTC’s 2016 Supplier of the Year
RIDING WILDFIRE
100-year-old Vanguard creates new initiative to spark reshoring effort
Mandi Strickland and Mike Moody have been busy spreading the 'Wildfire' initiative aimed at helping brands, designers and manufacturers, through education and technical expertise, develop innovative fabric technologies that transform end results.
“The whole idea, with education, is to spread technology and knowledge like wildfire throughout our region,” said Mike Moody, Vanguard Pai Lung’s vice president of Product Development.
The “radical” part of this endeavor? Innovation will start at the machine level based on fabric style and construction trends – not vice versa.
To fully understand the concept and Vanguard’s leadership role in the reshoring movement, let’s back up a moment. Indeed, the company is 100 years old, dating back to 1916 when Supreme Manufacturing was founded in Brooklyn, N.Y. Through the decades, it went through various ownership and name iterations, then became Vanguard Pai Lung in 2009 when Bill Moody, Leo Yates (now consulting for Vanguard) and Taiwan-based Pai Lung President James Wang bought Vanguard Supreme, a division of Monarch. Since then, the company has seen continual growth and transformation – all based on a changing mentality, according to Bill Moody’s son Mike.
“We are a 100-year-old company but, in essence, we’re a seven-year-old company,” he said. “Under the new ownership came a new mindset regarding how Vanguard functions. We’re looking at trends in fabric innovation and developing machines around it. In the past, Vanguard has always done what customers asked them to do. But we never had a marketing department. We never had R&D, where we were actually out there knitting fabric and coming up with new constructions with new yarns. We just built machines.”
Mike Moody and his team have been working on an out-of-the-box concept for several years as they witnessed the return of some textile and apparel manufacturing to this hemisphere. But even with creative leadership, a team of engineers and experienced, skilled manufacturing employees, they knew they were missing a piece of the puzzle to make it all work, he said.
So in May, they hired someone with a background they knew would be imperative to transforming Wildfire from pipedream to reality. Mandi Strickland brings a plethora of experience and knowledge to her role as director of Innovation and Supply Chain Relations, having started her career in manufacturing management at Hanesbrands and working for years in various roles around knit fabric development, color development, quality, product testing and regulatory at retailers Gap and Belk.
Together, Mandi, Mike and his sister Christine Moody, Creative Development coordinator, form Vanguard Pai Lung’s Wildfire team.
With Wildfire, the torch has been lit for big things to happen in the U.S. and Western Hemisphere, according to the trio.
Through its leadership in proactively pushing the reshoring movement by helping clear some of the technical hurdles and overcome knowledge gaps, Vanguard Pai Lung has been named eTC’s 2016 Supplier of the Year.
‘Amazing’ reaction
Strickland “hit the ground running” when she joined the company and, with Mike Moody, has spent much time developing the concept; introducing it to retailers, brands and manufacturers; and attending trade shows and international fabric shows to learn the latest fabric trends, constructions and the like.
The general reaction to Wildfire? “Amazing,” according to Mike Moody.
“Everybody says, ‘where has this been?’ ” he said. “The retailers, the brands and the yarn companies absolutely love it because there is a lack of technical knowledge on this side of the world and we are here to fill that void. The mills like to develop fabric specifically for a brand so they’re the only supplier of it. I think they’ll begin to understand the value in Wildfire because they’ll realize they don’t need to do the sampling anymore. And if they partner with us, we will send brands and work their way.”
And Strickland said she enjoys those “a-ha” moments that come when she’s explaining Wildfire.
“I’ve always enjoyed education and sharing the textile industry with people because I think it’s fantastic,” said Strickland, who holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from N.C. State’s College of Textiles. “So the joy for me comes when you are speaking with a creative person and you’re helping them understand what the possibilities are and then you see that light on their face come on. You’re like, ‘YES, you get it!’ Then you really get excited and start brainstorming about ways you can help them.”
Wildfire aims: Inspire. Create. Deliver.
So, why Wildfire? Or, in particular, what are its capabilities? They are numerous, according to Mike Moody and Strickland. It starts with Wildfire’s tagline: “Inspire. Create. Deliver.”
“One of the most important part of our tagline is the word ‘deliver,’ ” Mike Moody said. “For example, a designer may come to us with an inspiration or fabric they want to re-create exactly. We may analyze it and explain it is made on a full jacquard machine with no capacity in this hemisphere or on this side of the world. It's made of specialty yarn with a specialty finish, so if you're going to make a T-shirt out of it, you better sell that T-shirt for $400. What we can do is say, ‘OK, I see what you like, let's see how we can re-engineer it so it's a deliverable, sellable product…and make this happen in a couple of days. So the deliver part is huge – you can always inspire and create.”
And that ability to deliver comes from experience and know-how, Strickland added.
“Because we offer the most extensive product line and we have the technical expertise, we can offer a complete solution,” she said. “As for the technical expertise part, Mike has more than 20 years of experience, having learned from the ground up. So many people in this region don't have that expertise, especially in the United States, because everybody left and went to China, South America and Central America to train everyone else and then retired. The fact that we have people here who are capable of engineering new knit structures and have an in-depth understanding of the knitting machines is a big deal.”
Beyond the delivery and expertise aspects of Wildfire, other goals, they added, include to: improve cycle time, create more efficient mill sourcing and reduce development time. Mike Moody explained how this works by giving an example of a garment producer that contacted Vanguard Pai Lung to request the cam and needle setup on a knitting machine to produce certain fabrics it had sent to the company.
“Sometimes the mills need help determining this info and we are here to help, as well as give them the ability for a quick turnaround,” he said. “The brands, being creative, will pick a knit, warp knit or woven and we can help them turn that into a sellable, reproducible product. For example, even if they analyze the fabric correctly, relaying that information to a mill in Asia or Central America to reproduce it, could take months. – get yarn down there, get the right cams, get the right needles, get the right personnel, etc. So now, instead, they can come to us, we will analyze it and tell them exactly what they need and even re-create it in a couple of days”
“On top of that,” Strickland added, “we’re telling them what machine the fabrics are made on, which makes for more efficient mill sourcing. Working on the brand side, if we found a fabric that we liked, we would just cut it up and send it around the world in hopes that somebody would send us something back that was similar so that we could approve it and move on. That’s inefficient.
“So let’s go ahead and identify what the machines are and then we can talk to our sales people and find out where the machines exist and can send them in the right direction,” she continued. “And also, while reducing development costs, we’re reducing the back and forth iterations of the mills sending in fabrics and the material developers saying ‘that’s not right.’ They want this but they’re not technically communicating it so the mill understands. So they just keep going back and forth until they run out of time and they just approve something.”
Not to mention that the costs and time associated with product development can be greatly reduced, she noted.
On mill sourcing, Mike Moody added that brands are struggling to find the right places to source in the Americas because they’ve been working with Asian companies for so many years.
“Vanguard has been selling in the Americas for years, so we know all the mills, what machines they have and what they can produce,” he said. “So that’s another thing that we can help them with if they’re trying to reshore in the Americas.”
Brands, retailers can ‘own’ the process
Another aspect of Wildfire: It gives brands and retailers more control over product development, rather than having mills dictate much of the process and end result, they added. Typically, mills may send samples that are easier and less expensive for them to produce on their current machinery, not necessarily the latest technology, they said.
But Vanguard Pai Lung has new, innovative machines beyond “typical” offerings in the industry, Mike Moody said.
“For example, we have a specialty double-knit machine” he said. “A normal double-knit machine is a 4X2 – you have four tracks on the cylinder, two tracks on the dial. Well, we have a machine that’s a 6X4, so you can create fabrics that have holes on the outside and holes on the inside for better breathability, which most mills can’t produce because they don’t have that machinery.”
Additionally, under the Wildfire concept, brands, retailers and mills can own their own “fabric IP,” meaning their technologies and styles aren’t shared with anyone else, and they can work with someone they can trust, Strickland added.
Other aspects: A Material Library and Innovation Lab
The Wildfire team also is working to develop a Material Library, which can provide design inspiration, developed by machine type under reproducible, vetted constructions, according to Strickland – which, again, can improve sourcing options, she added.
Vanguard Pai Lung’s Innovation Lab includes numerous machines, including single knits, double knits, three-end fleeces, polar fleeces, mini-Jacquards and engineered stripers. There, fabric can be developed in real time by knitters and technicians onsite, and sample rolls can be produced quickly, she said.
“We invite mills, brands and retailers to come to work with us,” Strickland said. “Come sit with us while we knit. You can decide if you want to change the yarn out or whatever you’d like. If you have an engineer who has a great idea and they don’t have any way of doing it, come talk with us. We can adjust cams, we can make changes, we can try new things because we’re the machine manufacturer. We’re thrilled to work with anyone who has an idea.
“But then the best part is you walk away with a complete sample roll,” she added. “So you come up with a cool new fabric and there is no question about how to reproduce it because you walk away with it in your hand.”
And if they want finished fabric with specific fibers and yarns, Wildfire can provide that work through its partners such as Parkdale, Unifi, Navis TubeTex, Thies, DyStar, Gaston College’s Textile Technology Center, Beribi and many more. With Vanguard Pai Lung, those companies, along with what Mike Moody calls the “Campfire Coalition,” meet on a regular basis to discuss new technologies, market trends, costing, ways to work together and much more.
Wildfire also offers fabric construction analyses, where information such as technical yarn specifications, knitting machine requirements, cam and needle settings, yarn setup and finishing options can be ascertained, they said.
“Another thing that has captured a lot of interest is our ability to do reverse engineering,” Strickland said. “You can send us a swatch and we will ‘deknit’ it and have the yarn analyzed all the way down to the fiber level. We can tell you all the information about the yarn so it’s exactly reproducible.”
Among goals for Wildfire: To offer virtual knit design with the Shima Seiki Apex software that will improve development time and decrease the number of knitted samples required, and to build a dedicated design center connected to its 273,000-square-foot facility here, which will include machines, fabric and yarn storage, design space and conference rooms, they said.
Big aspirations for a ‘moving target’
Creating more textile and apparel manufacturing capacity in the U.S. and this region will require more work by companies, with a particular need for more automation in sewing machines, Mike Moody said. But knitting and finishing is no problem, and Vanguard Pai Lung is working to improve issues around dyeing, which requires chemicals and water and is heavily regulated, he added.
To that end, the company has developed a dye box for dyeing the yarn and thread directly on the machine. With that component, yarn or thread passes through a patented chamber, which injects the yarn with dye, with no bleed, he said.
“Hopefully, that’s going to be a product for Wildfire as well,” Mike Moody said. “I think one of the first products for that is going to be anywhere a sheet of yarn goes, such as beaming, warp knitting and weaving – processes like that where you can put the machine right in between it, the beam and the actual warp knitting machine, and dye it as it goes in.
“Our goal is to bring textiles back into the U.S. for that product because you don’t have a dye machine anymore, you don’t have chemicals, you don’t have water and you don’t have all that power. You’re literally just spitting ink onto yarn.”
The Wildfire team has big aspirations for the initiative, which they call a “moving target,” but they’re working tirelessly to achieve their goals, they said.
“We have the technical expertise and you can rely on us,” Strickland said. “We are able to allow brands, retailers and manufacturers to differentiate their products because they’re working from the machine forward, which is something no one ever does.
“And, as more people get into the athleisure and athletic markets, the brands are definitely going to need to continue to look for more ways to differentiate themselves,” she added. “It’s a different dynamic. I think yarn is very important, but starting from the machine and with what yarns you’re using, that’s key.”
READ RELATED BLOG: Vanguard's Wildfire – Sparking a revival?