SPRINGDALE -- A local company that sells clothes to the impoverished all over the world got its start from catering to wealthy, fashion-conscious Japanese teenagers 18 years ago.
Larry and Bonnie Brock were antique dealers from Springdale all those years ago. Their son, Vance, was a businessman in New Jersey. Classic, James Dean-style blue jeans were all the rage in Japan and Europe back then. So the elder Brocks started looking for the jeans at their usual stops in garage sales and thrift stores.
"We saw all these other clothes for sale and thought that surely there must be some market for them, too," Larry Brock said. There is. The market just wasn't easy to find or to follow, said Vance, who moved back to help manage the for-profit business.
"Almost no one in this business told us how it's done," Brock said. "We made a lot of mistakes and put together a lot of ugly bales. It took us all evening to load our first truck. Now it takes an hour."
The Brocks were interviewed Tuesday in the office of their 5,000-square-foot warehouse in downtown Springdale, headquarters of what's now Northwest Rags Inc. at 418 E. Center St.
"Rags" doesn't refer to the clothes they ship, but to the by-product: high-quality shop rags usually sold to paint stores in the region. These are made out of fabrics that aren't shipped as clothing.
The rag sideline helps their clothing business survive rapid shifts in the world market, the Brocks said. For example, a strong U.S. dollar right now hurts exports. The African, Asian and Latin American countries the Brocks export to can afford high-dollar prices the least, Vance said.
"It's the worst it's been in 15 years," Vance Brock said of the low-end used clothes market.
The Brocks ship as much as 45,000 pounds -- 20 metric tons -- of clothes a week when conditions are better, Vance Brock said. The family's office brims with books, old VHS tapes, toys and other scraps picked up from their shopping excursions.
Adam Trowbridge is president of Global Pacific Enterprises, a export vendor in Versailles, Mo. His business exports clothing and buys it from businesses like the Brocks'.
"The people buying these clothes can't afford new clothes, whoever makes them," Trowbridge said. Textile industries in developing countries don't sell to the poor in their home markets, he said. They export to countries like the United States for much higher prices.
"With these used clothes, we're talking about profit margins of 2 or 3 cents a pound," Trowbridge said. "Remember, that's on clothes that didn't cost much to begin with. That gives you some idea of what the people in this market can afford. These are countries where the machinery to make their own textiles would be a major investment."
The Brocks' sources range from charities, churches, and thrift shops to garage sales. Trucks from the business range as far as 200 miles in their gathering. Springfield, Mo. and Tulsa, Okla., are among the usual stops. The business also accepts drop-offs at its warehouse.
"One of our big advantages is the climate here," Vance Brock said. "We have clothes for hot, cold and in-between. If we were in Miami, we'd have nothing but summer clothes," he said. "If we were in New York, we'd have more winter clothes than we need."
The business is not a charity, but it does serve good ends, the Brocks said.
"The way we see it, we get good clothes to people who need them, and we're keeping all that out of landfills," Vance Brock said. "The churches and charities we work with also get something for the clothes they can't use, and don't have to pay to put it all in a landfill."
The Brocks do a very good job of keeping worthwhile clothes out of landfills when given the opportunity, said Robyn Reed, director of the Boston Mountain Waste Management District, which manages Washington County's solid waste. The Brocks buy clothes dropped off at the landfill's recycling center, she said. "We've gotten to the point that if somebody comes to the landfill with clothes they're going to throw away, we tell them they can drop that off at the recycling center," she said.
There are limits on what the business can use. Not even the rag business can use fabrics that are mildewed or even wet, the Brocks said.
The most important thing is to sort cloth properly, something the business' small staff of a half-dozen have become very good at, Vance Brock said.
"We have sorters who can pick something up, look at it, feel in and sort it in a half-second," he said. "They're lightening fast."
Low-cost exports such as the Brocks probably aren't hurting other countries' domestic textile businesses, said Raja Kali, associate professor in international economics and business at the University of Arkansas.
"This is not predatory pricing, where a business sells something at below cost to dump it on a foreign market and drive competition out," Kali said. "This business sounds like more of a lower-end, humanitarian enterprise. If a country did have a textile industry it wanted to protect and this was competition, it has ways to do that."
Tariffs, restrictions, requirements and other forms of discouraging imports are all well known, he said. In fact, they've become quite sophisticated, he said. "In Canada, they have a limit on the value of merchandise someone who lives there can bring back from the United States based on the length of time you spent on your trip," he said. "These kind of measures can get pretty sophisticated."
Countries that allow such imports are likely countries that need a supply of good-quality clothing at a low price, Kali said.
The business also still occasionally serves affluent teenagers, Larry Brock said.
"We found a box with 13 classic jeans in them and sold the lot for $5,000," he said. "That doesn't happen very often any more."
NW News on 09/27/2015