Translated material
America will be left without jeans
Levi's plant in San Antonio (Texas) will be closed before the end of this year. Canadian enterprises of the company are waiting for the same fate in March next year. At the same time, the main factories for the production of Levi Strauss jeans, which, like Coca-Cola and Ford, is considered one of the oldest American brands, were closed to the United States back in 2002-in BLU Rija (Georgia), San Francisco, Powelle (Tennessi States), as well as three enterprises in Texas. Since 1997, Levi's closed 29 factories, having dismissed 19,700 employees. The reasons for such a large -scale folding of production were competition from the younger and more fashionable jeans brands (the main rival of Levi's - American VF Corporation, which owns Lee and Wrangler brands) and a fall in sales, which has been happening for the past six years.
According to the President of Levi Strauss, Phil Marino, “there are very few companies that produce jeans in North America. We were one of the last. " In his statement, the head of the company also said that from now on Levi Strauss is concentrated on the design, sales, marketing and customer service system.
It is curious that Levi Strauss managed to quickly agree on such a large -scale restructuring program with trade unions, which in the West usually react very painfully to similar plans. However, in this case, the leaders of the Unite trade union accused not the top management of the company, but an American trade policy, or in other words, globalization. In their opinion, the closure of factories is the next proof of the disastrous trade policy of opening borders, which forces the company to look for cheap places of production around the world and destroys the fate of workers and entire traditional industries.
The production of jeans under the Levi Strauss label will now engage in manufacturers in Latin America, Asia, as well as in Russia. The Rostov company Gloria Jeans has already begun production of a trial batch of Levi Strauss Signature TM jeans. Jeans sewn under an agreement with Levi's at a factory in the city of Shakhty Rostov Region will be sold only in the American Wal-Mart hypermarket network and cost about $ 25, which is three times cheaper than Hungarian and Polish analogues.
REFERENCE
Levi's company was created in 1853 by an immigrant from Bavaria Levy Strauss. After 20 years, he patented the impregnation technology, which made the cotton fabric much more durable, turning it into a well -known “jeans”. Since then, according to Levi's estimates, the company has sold 3.5 billion pairs of its famous jeans around the world. In 2002, the company's sales amounted to $ 4.2 billion.
09/29/2003 / Stanislav Many