Today we’d like to introduce you to Alex Khakham.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Alex. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
My father started Gil Sewing Corp which is a garment manufacturer of retail and uniform apparel in Chicago in 1993. He built it from a 4 person small shop to a much larger size. But during the time, I was going to College (U of I) all manufacturing was being outsourced overseas, so he kept telling me to be a doctor or a lawyer and not go into the garment industry. During the summer after I graduated, while I was waiting to go to dental school, I worked for him at the factory. While I was there, I saw other opportunities which he had not yet explored, like putting out a uniform catalog to sell to distributors or going after the retail clothing market where companies need smaller run production and quicker turns. So, I decided not to go to dental school and to stay and work with him. Since then, we’ve tripled in size, we’ve also survived and grown during the recession. Now we handle production for some of the bigger brands in the retail market as well as produce for smaller designers as well. We also manufacture uniforms for hotels, casino’s, airlines, etc.
Throughout the years, I’ve seen the trend shift to fast fashion retail, knowing this, we try to get leaner and quicker in all of our production by automating and streamlining the entire production process. About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine Dan German who was working for a big brand retailer approached me to brainstorm about a fast fashion concept which we later named The Garment Creative. Basically, a Wine & Design concept where women come for any occasion to our newly opened retail location in Wicker Park where they sip some wine, learn the real secrets of designing from actual fashion designers and then get to design their own garment on an Ipad. They get to choose the fabrics, trims, change design concepts of garments, and see exactly how it will look on the iPad. After they finalize their design during the 2-hour event, we produce the custom garment for them in 2 weeks or less at our Gil Sewing Chicago Factory. This is about as fast as fashion can get. We’re bringing together customization, with a simplified form of no experience needed “project runway” so to speak, and making the garment faster than anybody.
I think that the entire fashion and retail industry is heading to faster and faster fashion. The ability to customize that fast fashion is something that is completely new. And with domestic production which we have at Gil Sewing Corp., there is nothing better than having low waste, fast fashion, and supporting local manufacturing.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been a smooth road. Throughout the outsourcing era, many garment manufacturers closed, they didn’t know how to streamline manufacturing, they didn’t know how to diversify their production. Up to 2007 75% of our manufacturing relied on 2 customers producing with us. We got a real wake up jolt when one of them suddenly stopped ordering and told us that they were shifting 90% of their production over to Asia. We had to scramble, we had to find other customers quickly in order to survive, I remember even speaking with my dad one day and saying that we might have to close if we don’t find production within the next month. Both of us then got on the road and found other customers. We changed our production to diversify the type of products we produce. Now we produce knits, wovens, tops, bottoms, jackets, tailored apparel, shirt, etc. Plus we diversified our customer, now no one customer is allotted more than 20% of our production capacity.
The other struggle has just been getting worse and worse in the last few years, it’s the abundance or lack of labor. For the type of production we do where we produce more than 120 different and new styles every single month, we need to have skilled sewers. There are really none left int he states. A lot of the sewers come from overseas, and with the borders pretty much closed, no labor is coming in which knows or wants to sew for a living.
Please tell us about Gil Sewing Corp/The Garment Creative.
What sets Gil Sewing apart from other manufacturers is the fact that we care about our customers, and our quality shows it. We believe in one basic idea; that if our customer grows, then we’ll grow with them. That’s why we care so much about the quality we produce, and how we work with our customers. Our customers don’t come to us to produce only one type of product, they come to us to produce their entire line. There is no one else like this, a manufacturer that has the ability and skill to produce all sorts of products; from bottoms, tops, wovens, knits, outerwear, etc. We streamline the development and manufacturing process, we work with our customers on suggestions of how to better make their garment, and we work with them on how to faster deliver the product. Most manufacturers specialize in only one type of garment production, we’re different, we believe that having the ability and machinery to produce all sorts of garments is the reason why we’ve grown throughout the outsourcing era, the recession, and are still growing to this day.
Our fast fashion retail model is also something that is completely new. We give regular consumers the ability to design their own custom garment. With no experience and in a fun and easy way. Something similar to a Wine & Paint class that most everyone has taken by this point, but this is Wine & Design, where at the end, you get to wear a garment that you designed. We do all the hard work, the customer just does the fun part. There is no concept like this yet, we are the pioneers of fun fashion, fun fashion meets fast fashion.
Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
Building forts out of boxes and fabric in my dad’s warehouse at Gil Sewing.
Contact Info:
- Address: Gil Sewing Corp
3500 N. Kostner Ave.
Chicago, IL 60641The Garment Creative
2124 W. Division St.
Chicago, IL 60622 - Website: www.gilsewing.com www.thegarmentcreative.com
- Phone: 773-545-0990
- Email: alex@gilsewing.com
- Instagram: @thegarmentcreative.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thegarmentcreative/ https://www.facebook.com/Gil-Sewing-Corp-174513459252778/
Image Credit:
Gil Sewing Corp., Gil Sewing Employees, The Garment Creative, Michael Kaham
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