Thriving in the industry for the last three centuries, Eastman, which has its headquarter and a factory in Buffalo, NY, a sales office in Hong Kong, another factory in Ningbo, China and 50 worldwide dealers – claimed that it sold all of its machines present at the booth, on the very first day of the recently concluded Texprocess show.
Enjoying the unique advantage of being a US company, Eastman is benefiting from the growing ‘Made in US’ trend, with many of its clients really interested in buying the company’s locally manufactured machines. “We find that our US customers are looking for hi-tech machines, trying to save labour cost as much as possible. Thus, there has been a lot of interest in our automated machines, especially our new raptor 7 cm automated spreading machine, and our Eastman cutting machines,” said Wade Stevenson II, President of the company.
Though the company is based in the US, it also takes pride in operating as a global company, adapting their business to the local culture and the people of each country they operate in. The company was particularly happy with the good response at the show from around the world. “We had some customers from Bangladesh, which earlier was never the case. We also saw few customers from India, and even Pakistan,” added Stevenson.
The company believes that the big story for them this year has been their continued growth in Bangladesh despite all its problems, and India for its growing domestic market. “Besides these two countries, which are really the shining stars in the garment industry at the moment, there is Vietnam which is coming up too,” claimed Stevenson. He added that South America is increasingly becoming important in the present day scenario, with Columbia, Peru (knits) and Brazil all put together, looking good for the company in 2014.
Catering to almost all big customers like Nike, Ralph Lauren, Milligan and American Apparel, the company has been a regular participant at the Atlanta show. “The Texprocess show this year is far better than the last year’s show, with more number of participants and visitors,” concluded Stevenson.
