Bagir and Obama

June 9, 2009 - 6:48 AM by Jessica · 6 Comments
Filed under: Business, coexistence, design, Environment, General, Politics, Technology

Is he wearing Ecogir?

President Obama isn’t the first guy to try and create a better working relationship between Israel and its neighbors…or so Israeli suit manufacturer Bagir is aiming to point out to whoever’s listening.

Turns out that Bagir’s latest technological suit, ECOGIR, which is made from recycled plastic bottles and has been written about on this site, is manufactured at Metco, a tailored clothing factory in Port Said. And 50% of what Bagir manufactures in Port Said goes to the U.S. while the other half heads to the UK market. In the U.S., EcoGir is available at Sears stores and online at Sears.com, where it’s called the Covington Perfect Poly-Wool Blazer.

According to Offer Gilboa, Bagir’s CEO, the company “is grateful to the Obama administration for showing support in this area and appreciate the new administration’s effort in the regional peace process. Bagir has demonstrated a working relationship can not only be possible, but also profitable and congenial.”

Bagir, like Delta Galil and Tefron, the two other Israeli textile companies that do business with their Jordanian and Egyptian neighbors, has been working with Egypt since the U.S. signed a historic trade partnership with both Egypt and Israel five years ago. The agreement created Qualified Industrial Zones (QIZs) in Egypt and Jordan, which allow for duty-free export of certain Egyptian and Jordanian goods that contain Israeli inputs to the U.S.

The QIZs have created working relationships that continue despite war, disagreements and political machinations. Work continued this winter(see page 14), in spite of the fighting in Gaza, and during other periods of upheaval.

You figure that if people can get along well enough to make suits out of recycled bottles, they could figure out other methods of getting along.

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Tags: Bagir, egypt, Jordan, Metco, President Obama, QIZ

A textile peace

January 15, 2009 - 10:34 AM by Jessica · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, coexistence, General

There was a time, back in the days of Oslo and the peace accords, when several Israeli manufacturers thought about establishing factories down in Gaza, in the Karni Industrial Zone, as a way of utilizing Palestinian labor and forging ties of economic cooperation. There weren’t that many Israeli textile companies left by the late 1990s, but at least one, bedding manufacturer Kitan, had a factory in Karni for a short while.

So when the military operation began in Gaza, my editor at Women’s Wear Daily asked me to do a piece about whether the current situation was affecting local textile companies. It was a logical question, given that goods manufactured in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip and shipped to the U.S. are duty free. But instead of manufacturing in Gaza, private label manufacturer Delta Galil, like other Israeli companies, went to Jordan and Egypt instead, where relations were warmer and the commute wasn’t too bad. And that’s where the underwear that it makes for Marks and Spencer, Target, Victoria’s Secret, Tommy Hilfiger, and other companies are actually cut and sewn, after being designed in Israel, thereby working within the U.S. duty free model.

I’ve written about this phenomenon a number of times over the years, in good times and bad. And when I spoke with my contacts at the remaining Israeli textile companies, Delta, Tefron and Bagir, they all said the same thing, “There’s nothing to write about because we’re not affected.”

And they’re not. Delta’s main plant is in the north, where work didn’t stop during the Second Lebanon War either, even with a solid percentage of Arab employees and Katyushas falling nearby. The same went for Tefron, whose Israeli plant that specializes in seamless underwear is located in the north as well, in Misgav. The only real question mark is Bagir, the innovative suitmaker manufacturer that is located in Kiryat Gat, uncomfortably close to the rest of the southern towns that have been hit in this two-week-plus war. But the answer was the same for Bagir as well, even though they’ve had to conduct bomb shelter drills just to be safe.

I wasn’t able to get to Jordan or Egypt to see what things are like right now in the companies’ factories. I’m told it’s just “business as usual,” says Esti Maoz, Delta’s chief marketing officer, because the “Egyptians aren’t such big fans of Hamas.”

Let’s hope the quiet continues on the fabric front.

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