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The Zappos temporary offices on Carson Avenue in downtown Las Vegas on Wednesday, September 26, 2012.
Friday, Jan. 18, 2013 | 11:29 a.m.
It goes without saying these days that all large-scale, light manufacturing – shoes and clothes, for instance – must be done in factories in other countries.
People associated with Zappos and the Downtown Project are about to turn that adage on its head.
Sources close to the project say a shoe manufacturing plant will be in operation by the end of the year in Las Vegas, hopefully somewhere downtown.
“It’s all but a done deal,” a source said.
When up and running, the plant will employ 231 people full-time; many more temporary employees will be hired during peak buying seasons.
The source said the plant would be tooled to manufacture brand-name shoes. Because much of the detailed work on shoes is done by hand, experienced workers will first have to be imported.
“The difficulty will be finding labor,” the source added.
A public announcement about the plans is expected in a few weeks, he also said.
More than 50 years ago, most shoes sold in the United States were manufactured here. Today, only 1.5 percent of the shoes sold in the United States are manufactured here, the source also said, because of long-held beliefs that it is more economical to manufacture them in labor-cheap countries like China. However, he added, the numbers “pencil out” for creating a plant here; not only will employees be paid a “living wage,” he added, “they will probably do much better than that.”
Bringing back manufacturing jobs from other countries to the United States is currently something of a mini-trend in other areas of production. Product quality, tariffs, rising pay scales and delivery issues all have contributed to the trend.
For instance, sources said, it can take three to six months for China-built products to reach the United States.
Companies such as General Electric, NCR Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the Christian Science Monitor reported last year, already have moved some production back to the United States from China.
The online newspaper also noted, however, that “high-labor” products “like shoes, textiles and most clothing are probably gone forever.”
That is about to change, the source said.
“These companies want their products to be known as ‘American made,” he said. “They are going to be able to do that.”
Joe Schoenmann doesn’t just cover downtown, he lives and works there. Schoenmann is Greenspun Media Group’s embedded downtown journalist, working from an office in the Emergency Arts building.
I really do hope this works out well for all concerned.
More jobs and another new industry in Vegas is a great addition to the market place.
The deciding factor is going to be if Americans will step up and pay the price for American made products.
Comment removed by moderator. Inappropriate
CSN is pretty good about developing courses that meet the needs of the local business community. I don't think they'll have a labor problem for long.
I'll buy them because they are made in America. China is the biggest sweatshop there is.
I also would like to know why comments on future tense verbs are inappropriate. They - it's a fact - appear in nearly every article in this space over the past two weeks considerably more than present-tense verbs or publicly-cited sources.
Eliminating them (as well as "should", "might" and "is/are expected to") would make most of these articles nearly content-free and today's is no exception. Today's article (as the previous post states) is mostly market-making. It's not "reporting" in any conventional sense.
Remove this comment if you must, but in its place write "Comment removed by moderator: Painful truth."
231, how could you or your "source" possibly know they will have precisely 231 cobblers to start? Weird. Great that downtown would once again get a commercial manufacturing operation. Imagine that they would need 20-40,000 s.f. It will need to go in a manufacturing or commercial manufacturing zone, like the arts district or south of Charleston and west of First St.
^LMAO
I was reading the article and wondering the same thing Daniel Jackson....
The shoddy journalism in this city is one of its major problems.
Valid concerns, but American wages have dropped and Asian wages have risen, then transportation costs, bribes, travel costs, etc. so maybe it will work out. If people are buying $500 designer shoes? Up in Utah, there are many people making little fabric items that are sewn on clothes etc.