Unionwear (asi/73775) recently received the inaugural Manufacturing Reshoring Award from the Reshoring Initiative and SEAMS, the domestic textile manufacturing association. The award was presented to the Newark, NJ-based supplier for bringing cut-and-sew jobs back to the United States.

"We are thrilled to be recognized by the textile industry for our work in reshoring cut-and-sew jobs, especially now that the new tariffs make domestic sourcing of hats and bags more attractive,” Mitch Cahn, president of Unionwear, told Counselor.

Unionwear’s 180 workers make baseball hats, backpacks and other bags. Cahn says that the company’s technological innovations have leveled the playing field with imports by highlighting small batch, quick turn manufacturing. Unionwear’s predictive configuration tool at www.onetrillionhats.com/ allows it to sell custom made products using a traditional webstore experience rather than a cumbersome online configurator, while its mobile ERP platform automates purchasing, production scheduling, manufacturing and shipping. The result is “made to order” as seamless as ordering from Amazon, Cahn says.

“Promotional apparel is really more of a B2B business than the fashion industry, and we have grown by capitalizing on businesses eager to co-brand with the Made in USA label,” he says. “Once we decided to do 100% of our manufacturing in the USA, the next step was to invest in technology to highlight all the advantages domestic manufacturing has to offer – high mix, low volume, quick turn. At some point in the near future, with automation, we won't see much of a cost premium to small batch manufacture in the USA.”

The baseball cap industry’s mass relocation to China since the 1990’s, and Unionwear’s success in keeping manufacturing stateside throughout, was thoroughly explored earlier this month in the three-part serial podcast documentary “American Icon” on iHeartRadio’s Red Pilled America podcast. 

The Manufacturing Reshoring Award was presented at SEAMS’ annual conference in Savannah, GA, on May 9. At the event, Contempora Fabrics won the Textile Reshoring Award and Mara Hoffman Designs won the Brand Reshoring Award.