Okabashi means flip-flops
Location: Buford, Georgia
Ownership: Private
Factory size: 100,000 square feet
Employees: 250 (100 year-round, 150 seasonal); average pay of $10-15/hour for factory workers
Revenue: $15 million-$20 million
Product: Flip-flops and other molded shoes.
Average price for a basic flip-flop: $14.99
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The Georgia Manufacturing Expo, which highlights Georgia manufacturers, will be held June 13 and 14 from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. at the Gwinnett Center, 6400 Sugarloaf Parkway in Duluth. Admission is $10 at the door or free with pre-registration. Information: www.georgiamanufacturingexpo.com
BUFORD — If you’re wearing a pair of Made-in-the-U.S.A flip-flops this weekend, odds are they were made in Georgia.
Okabashi Brands shipped more than 2.5 million pairs of flip-flops last year from a one-story brick building in Buford to Wal-Marts and CVS pharmacies, fancy spas and hotels and other stores and outlets.
The company, which derives its name from a Japanese word the company says roughly translates to “wellness, was founded by Iranian immigrant Bahman Irvani and his family 30 years ago when land outside Atlanta was cheap and Buford had plenty of people who knew how to run factories. The Irvanis kept Okabashi going through years when the company lost money, unable to compete with cheap overseas labor.
“If we ever were going to leave, it would have been 10 years ago,” Okabashi Vice President for Sales Jason Boswell says.
But Okabashi stayed.
The company’s location — minutes from I-285 and I-85 and a few hours from the Charleston port — still works, Boswell says.
And in the past two years, the Okabashi’s orders have grown. Companies like Margaritaville and Four Seasons used to hire companies overseas, mostly in China, to make their flipflops, but now they’re coming to Buford, Boswell says.
It’s part of a larger economic shift.
Chinese factories still make most of the shoes sold in the U.S. But China is slipping.
Today, about 80 percent of shoes sold in the U.S. were made in China, down from 85 percent three years ago, says Nate Herman of the American Apparel and Footwear Association.
Behind that shift: Higher labor costs in China, a shift in Chinese economic policy to focus on manufacturing things like consumer electronics and cars rather than footwear, and higher shipping and fuel costs, Herman says. And for U.S. companies, it’s easier to make sure finished products are safe for consumers when the factory is closer to home, Herman says.
That all means companies are looking outside China for manufacturers to make their flip-flops and similar consumer goods, mostly to other Asian countries or the Dominican Republic or Central America, but some to the U.S, Herman says.
Still, we’re talking baby steps: Three years ago, 99 percent of the shoes sold in the U.S. were imported. Today, 98 percent are, Herman says.
And Okabashi’s 2.5 million is a relatively small slice of the 100 million flip-flops Herman estimates are sold annually in the U.S.
“There’s only so much that will come back here,” he says. “Where [U.S.-made shoes are] now 2 percent of the market, that could grow over the next 10 years to 10 percent. I’m not sure it’ll ever be the majority of the market.”
For years, Georgia manufacturers watched as companies took their business elsewhere, to other states or countries, in a practice called outsourcing. But that trend appears to be reversing. According to the 2012 Georgia Manufacturing Survey, 14 percent of Georgia manufacturers lost work in 2012 because of outsourcing. But 16 percent gained work due to the opposite practice — in-sourcing. And in the 2014 survey, scheduled to be released by this fall, survey director Jan Youtie of Georgia Tech says she expects that trend to continue
And then there’s this:
While the company sells to major retailers, those retailers don’t always stock Okabashi products in all their stores.
At the CVS a few miles down the road from the Okabashi factory, a pair of purple women’s flip-flops sells for $9.99 each—2 for $15. The label says “Made in China.”
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