Jen Guarino on the future of work in an automated economy

As some of you may know, Christian is a founding board member of the Industrial Sewing & Innovation Center. This spring, ISAIC opened a 12,000 sq. ft factory in Detroit, filled with skylights and plants and humming with activity. Christian sat down with the CEO, Jen Guarino, to discuss the role ISAIC is playing within the broader conversation around American jobs and reshoring apparel manufacturing.

CHRISTIAN: I’d like to begin with your background. You didn’t start out in the world of production, but you’ve become a leading advocate for a new way of domestic manufacturing. How did that transition take place?

JEN: My career in fashion is not a linear one… I started on the creative side, as an illustrator for designers, and I found the design process to be absent of a connection to the customer. You could design something, but what happens after it leaves your desk? I began to get more curious about the process of manufacturing; without manufacturing, a design just stays a design and never becomes something marketable. After many decades in the industry, I ended up buying a 100+ year old leather goods company, with its own factory in Saint Paul, Minnesota. It happened to be at a time when we were growing rapidly, and there was a shortage of workers with the skills we needed, so we reached out to workforce development agencies. We discovered that other companies were having similar issues, and we began to look at how you bring skill back into an industry that has been, for years, all but dormant in the US. As we started to develop ways to train workers, I became painfully aware of the stigmas attached to manufacturing careers. That’s when I became passionate about how we value those skills. 

Flash forward to meeting Tom Kartsotis, who was launching the brand Shinola in Detroit. He invited me to open their leather goods design and manufacturing operation, and I felt like it was an opportunity to expand this work beyond my little company in Saint Paul, to a city that had employment issues and for a brand that was going to be national in stature. 

CHRISTIAN: I’ve heard you talk quite a bit about this skills gap… can you elaborate on the experience of trying to hire in Minnesota and then in Detroit, and your perception of what it meant to work in a factory?

JEN: Thank you for asking that question; as you know very well Christian, whenever I hear skills gap it drives me a little nuts [laughter] because I don’t think that it’s a skills gap–it’s a values gap. Nobody wants to become or be known for something that isn’t respected, it’s that simple. How do you build talent and skill in an industry, if it’s a talent and skill that people don’t value in our society? I think of it as being out of sight, out of mind. That’s what’s happened with American manufacturing. It left, and now you don’t know anyone in manufacturing, you don’t understand what it takes. One of the benefits of working at Shinola was that they believe in changing that; they highlight the skills and the people who make products possible. 

Nobody wants to become or be known for something that isn’t respected–it’s that simple. How do you build talent and skill in an industry, if it’s a talent and skill that people don’t value in our society?

In starting ISAIC, it was clear that we have to rip apart the stigma that laces the industry. If you don’t give people a good reason to be a part of it, why would they? Why would parents want their kids to be in it? I think that’s at the core of what must change. And I do believe it’s beginning to change, but it’s plagued the industry for decades. 

CHRISTIAN: American manufacturing has rightly become, while I wouldn’t say mainstream, certainly a topic that we’re hearing more about today than we were ten years ago–which Shinola played a role in. However, just because something’s made in America doesn’t mean that it’s made ethically. Could you speak to the state of American manufacturing these days?

JEN: I can go into a factory in LA or New York that I went into 30 years ago, and, not only have they not changed, but they’ve disintegrated. Going into all the reasons would be a whole other 2-hour conversation, but that’s the reality; the industry stopped investing in itself, so it aged and became more archaic and, I believe, more unethical. 

As we look forward, it’s not enough to onshore production. What does it look like to build an industry as it could and should be, in a way that can be both profitable and good for people? I don’t want it to sound like some kind of philanthropic effort; if it’s good for people, it’s good for business, and I don’t think it’s any more complicated than that, the fashion industry just hasn’t had a reason to do that. Now I believe that it does. 

At ISAIC, we’re balancing supporting industry with challenging industry to look at the environment they’re working in. How do they do things like providing their people full medical care, what does that look like, what does the math look like? There’s a difference between simply manufacturing in the US and doing it in a contemporary way that doesn’t exploit people. 

CHRISTIAN:  If you look at American apparel manufacturing, right now LA and New York anchor the industry. The industry is in the middle of a generational shift in how it thinks about supply chains and manufacturing; if that wasn’t the case, trying to do what we’re doing in Detroit would be a fool’s errand. But what we’re doing is so different that it gives us a chance; this transition is an opportunity for Detroit to step up and own what the next generation of production looks like. 

There’s this rich history of manufacturing in Detroit, and it sets us apart–as a city that’s known for making things, for being innovative, for being able to lead the charge on thinking differently about production. And while fashion hasn’t exactly been a dominant industry here, you can’t ignore that all the music that has come out of this city was accompanied by decades of influence in fashion.

Jen, you mentioned having the right partners at the table. Who are they and why have they helped us go beyond other efforts you’ve seen to bring back manufacturing?

JEN: I think there are several reasons why ISAIC has been able to gain traction and find its role in generating real change. There was a confluence of events happening at the same time, which you always have to attribute largely to luck. But beyond that, I think everyone involved was operating from the same ethos. We saw no reason why we couldn’t make things differently; it felt horribly overdue and, in many ways, inevitable. If that was true, then what a great place to do it! I mean, what was San Jose/Cupertino 50 years ago? It didn’t become Silicon Valley overnight, but it became what it became because it was able to attract like-minded people who had an interest in a new way. We believe Detroit could be the same for apparel. There are plenty of reasons why it will be different of course, but fundamentally, the idea that you go to a place because of your understanding of their approach to innovation. 

We triangulated corporate interest, public sector support from economic development agencies and the mayor’s office, and academic partnerships, looking at how we can step outside the four-year degree and train people with stackable credentials. Thankfully Shinola had already shattered some glass. This created an environment where we could celebrate what Detroit does well, which is to innovate and to understand production and logistics. Often we will talk about why brands are coming to Detroit and considering relocating… if you ask them this same question, they would tell you it’s because of that coordinated effort that’s coming from a common perspective.

CHRISTIAN:  And I’ll jump in to say it’s industry-led. American manufacturing can’t be philanthropic and it won’t survive on patriotism; this is being driven by industry needs. It’s not that we don’t need philanthropic support to get the ball rolling or that we shouldn’t create opportunities for the sake of employment, but really what we’re talking about here is something far more foundational to the success of an industry, and, because of that, hopefully it’s more stable. This is something that could become a serious part of Detroit’s economy.

JEN: The fact that it’s industry-led has real power, and what I mean by that is there are a lot of workforce development agencies across the country–I think Detroit has like 120. But frequently the ways people are trained are missing what industry really needs. If you don’t have a strong relationship with industry, you’re not going to get it right. So, coming at it from the other side: realizing industry needs to play a more active and leading role in skill development, that it’s going to be good for its own future...it’s going to develop the talent it needs, it’s going to develop jobs for sure, it’s going to have longevity and it’s going to make much better use of dollars invested in workforce development.

CHRISTIAN: Yep. So let’s jump into what we’re actually doing. In many ways the apprenticeship is a foundational piece of our programming, so maybe you can start there and walk through what ISAIC is in its current state?

JEN: It helps, I think, to start with a visual. Carhartt built out this beautiful home for ISAIC. It has a learning factory that hosts ongoing apprenticeship, which is just a fancy word for paid on-the-job training that’s worked very well in European countries like Germany. This is usually reserved for a pure manufacturing environment, but if you can envision a 12,000 sq. ft learning factory–which, by the way, is a fully operational contract manufacturing facility–and see it next to a classroom where we’re teaching certification workshops for ongoing career development. In one area you see technology being developed; we have a sonic welding system for masks, and a circular knitting system, and we’re working with Siemens and with researchers out of Carnegie Mellon to be the usage case facility for robotics. On one end, there’s a cafe, divided by plants and music, and on the other end is our support staff, who are not divided by glass or walls; we all share the same space. So there’s this general environment of learning around manufacturing. 

The apprenticeship program requires 200 hours of certification on the front end, which gives you a foundational understanding of industrial sewing, and then you move into an apprenticeship program for a year. It’s modularized learning and on the floor, not theoretical. We do this in an incredibly human-centric way–a word that’s used so often, but the minute you walk into our facility you feel it–it’s a place you want to be. And you also immediately notice that the people on the factory floor are young; if you go into most factory floors, the average age is above fifty. 

CHRISTIAN: It’s a testament to the support of Carhartt, which has been an incredible partner, and also to thinking about people differently; you don’t invest in skylights and plants if you’re not also investing in the people. We talk about sustainability in our materials and the energy sources in the building, but we’re starting with people. I wonder if you could talk more to the programming and how we think about supporting people in the industry?

JEN: If I had to describe as succinctly as possible what that means, it means that everyone is contributing and everyone’s contributions are valued; there’s a level of inclusion in activity and thought. So for example, we have employee circles, and one of them is on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. It’s not because every corporation should have it, it’s because we believe DE&I is an absolute strength. The leaders are nominated by their coworkers and what comes out of the circles is driven by the people who are affected the most by our company culture. It’s also driven by youth, and by how they want to shape their world. One of the leaders of the DE&I circle will represent his coworkers on the board’s DE&I committee, so now he has a voice on the board.. these are incredibly important things. And the way they end up manifesting is you see a level of engagement that is far beyond someone clocking in, clocking out. Everybody there knows that while they might be starting on industrial sewing, there’s a path for them that mirrors their interests. 

CHRISTIAN: In many ways we’re focused on the apparel industry, but what we’re tackling is: what does the future of work look like in this transition to an automated economy? We’re on the road to having more automation in production, so how do we teach traditional skills, get production going, but then create career pathways that don’t dead-end in minimum wage jobs?

JEN: So often industries wait until the writing’s on the wall, and then they’re left with a labor force that has to be retrained. We think about it as pretraining for what’s coming, instead of waiting until you have to retrain. But how do you train for a future when you’re not sure what form it’s going to take? Well, you train on skills that can be used on different equipment, in different settings. A manufacturer doesn’t have time to figure this out, they’ve got a business to run, but as an institute, we can be completely focused on these challenges. So, while we train traditional skills–which, by the way, is very important as it helps you understand what you need technology to do for you–tech is still so far away from replacing human touch, but what human touch is it going to replace first? We believe this largely starts by making sure that whoever is industrial sewing is also digitally literate, which in the past hasn’t been a thing; you’re expected to be a strong sewer and retire there. 

So often industries wait until the writing’s on the wall, and then they’re left with a labor force that has to be retrained. We think about it as pretraining for what’s coming, instead of waiting until you have to retrain.

Bridging design and manufacturing will be the way technology will make maybe the biggest difference. How do you go from design to factory floor in a seamless, nonwasteful, accurate way? A lot of work is being done on 3D Product Development, which only 3-5% of companies are using. This is nuts–some factories went that route 20 years ago. So if that’s the opportunity, then all of a sudden you’re starting to train someone who understands design to manufacturing, and that person will be better prepared for the future of manufacturing, with much greater job satisfaction and much better career potential. 

CHRISTIAN: And I would add that as supply chains become more agile and it becomes more important to manage inventory and respond quickly to demand, it’s also important that they’re learning from production through to the end consumer. As we look at our role as a manufacturer, it’s not to make as many products as possible at a high volume and low prices, it’s to set up a far more responsive supply chain that reduces waste and allows us to deliver what the customer wants, when they want it. I think you’re seeing across the ISAIC team a much more robust understanding of the whole process of making and selling a garment. Who knows where the team members are going to end up, but I’m sure it’s going to be a diverse set of career experiences.

JEN: Absolutely, and career diversity is a success in its own right. I think you helped explain the broader landscape of how we design, deliver apparel and manage the whole supply chain, back to: where do our materials come from, how do we limit overpurchasing or purchasing the wrong things, how do we get the consumer a more right piece of apparel on time. These require different skillsets. And they aren’t siloed anymore; there’s no way you can speed up this process and reduce waste unless all those functions are deeply connected. 

We’ve been operational for seven months now, in terms of our facility being up and running, and we made a decision to invest heavily in an ERP system. Typically you wouldn’t do so at this stage; we’re not manufacturing that much yet… we had over a million dollars worth of production in six months, which is amazing considering we did this during a pandemic, but the size of our company is not big enough to justify an ERP system yet. However, we know now is the right time to purchase it, so that everybody can know how to implement it, learn how it touches all points of a business and then design into that technology so it can work as you need it to work for you. That’s a very unusually early approach.

CHRISTIAN: Can you explain what an ERP system is for people who aren’t coming out of production?

JEN: It’s an enterprise resource planning system. It does everything from taking in an order to shipping it to a consumer, but there are different ways that can happen and that you can plan for it. Depending on how robust the system is, if I get an order in, I can check to see what fabric I have, I can look to the factory floor and see that oh, I’ve got a window on Thursday where I can kick out this on-demand order for 50 t-shirts, and then the system can turn around and quote that for 3 days, and it flows through the system all the way through ecomm. It helps you manage your supply chain; instead of designing and then going out to find your supply, perhaps you have a library of supply that designers design within, so you’re not strangulating yourself with too much material inventory and you become cost-efficient. If you’re developing something, this ERP system is built in a way that you can use a platform to deliver the information to the first operator on the floor. 

CHRISTIAN: Yes, and all this sounds like common sense, but it’s not actually common practice. Maybe we’ll step away from ISAIC for a second; it’s been interesting to watch us and the industry at large try to catch up to the way that customer expectations and brand needs have changed, but supply chains haven’t. The system of production that’s been dominant for the past, let’s say, 30 years since offshoring took off in the late eighties, early nineties, was built for a different supply chain. And what we’re doing is I think the next generation of that, which is starting to apply some best practices from other industries in terms of material planning, production, what you were just talking about.  

Jen, let’s go back to April. We were in the very early stages of the pandemic, and there wasn’t huge demand for apparel manufacturing. But since then, we’ve opened a factory, grown the team to thirty employees, switched the category we were producing in and the customers we were selling to, and played a role, not just in producing PPE within our factory, but also in helping to develop an ecosystem of local factories. So can you give a quick overview of how crazy the last seven months have been? I’ve watched from afar as you and the team worked to deliver products that were vital to workers on the frontlines. But what went on behind the scenes over that stretch? 

JEN: Well, to set the stage a bit, we were within a couple weeks of a launch party and moving in. And when Covid hit, no one had an idea of how long it was going last, how extreme it was going to be, but we knew it was serious. We paused and said, regardless of whether there was apparel to make out there, was it the right use of our resources? We realized that we had the expertise and support to perhaps deploy them towards a desperately needed product. We went to the state and the city, and to a medical center here in Detroit that helped us develop a gown, which we understood at the time was in high demand–so high that we knew there was no way we could fill it alone. But over the last three years we had developed an incredible network of people in the industry. We called all these companies that had varying sizes of cut and sew facilities, and of course they were thrilled, because their businesses were shuttered and–in a couple of cases–looking at closure, permanent closure. 

We purchased bulk material, which was in itself challenging, trying to learn the medical industry in two weeks, to learn what kind of material we needed, where to get it, during a time when there was this global scavenger hunt for the right materials (and when you found it, you had to put cash on the table and buy it right away). This was the environment we were walking into. We committed to taking the lead on this, mitigating the risk that small companies would be exposing themselves to if they tried to do it themselves. We cut and distributed the material to 12-15 companies and manufactured for the state and a couple regional medical centers. It was just crazy… the need was so high, and we had never made medical gowns before. But again, as an institute, we were in a position to be agnostic–or, shall we say, an unbiased, non-profiteering organization to lead the charge. We successfully did that, but not without a lot of pain; it was hard and we were working seven days a week for nearly five months. It developed deeper relationships between industry partners; we now have an industry council in Michigan that works closely together on initiatives, and we deepened our equipment partnerships. We’re in the position now where we have an incredibly trained staff, because they were sewing the same thing over and over again for months; what a great thing to train on in the beginning, it actually by default was an incredible training mechanism. But it was fast and furious and, Christian, I know you and I had many, shall we say, situation room phone calls at 10:00 at night with people all over the country, trying to figure out what to do about it. 

CHRISTIAN: I don’t think there will be many moments in a career where there is that much need and not misinformation, but just a lack of information, right, where the infrastructure wasn’t there that needed to be there. It speaks to the vulnerability that comes when you don’t know how to produce things.

JEN: Oh my goodness yes, it pulled back the wizard’s curtain and it was like, oh my gosh, what’s going on behind there? Well, we don’t know how to make this stuff in the United States, that’s what’s happening. So in a way, we were beautifully positioned to respond but also.... to say, see, we told you [laughter], having some control of your supply chain is critical, you know, critical! Yes, this is extreme because people’s lives are at stake, but it’s critical, period. You’re exposing your society to all sorts of risks when you don’t know how to make things anymore.

CHRISTIAN: And in the case of PPE, as you mentioned, that was amplified. I think there’s a reckoning that still needs to happen… we’re still in the heart of a crisis, but the vulnerability of relying on foreign supply for vital life-saving materials is something that, as a country, we need to wrestle with. During that time, I was talking to factory after factory that was asking how they could help. They went out on a limb to buy equipment and material, and one of the things that was disappointing was how quickly support disappeared. You have people who were putting their businesses and their lives on the line, and then, as soon as we got access to cheap product again coming in from out of the country, orders were canceled... it dried up overnight. ISAIC, as well as so many others, went through that rollercoaster ride of it’s vital, we can’t pay for it, it’s vital, we can’t pay for it, at a time when there was still clearly a need, and a willingness of people to go to work.

JEN: It’s unfortunate, and it’s going to take advocacy and, I believe, legislation to get serious about it. We saw a mad dash for domestic supply, but as soon as the supply chain opened up again all we heard was you’re too expensive. 

I should say, we’re not purists; we’re not saying that everything should be made in the US. We believe in a sort of progressive good approach to changing the industry, but the idea that you wouldn’t find a way to produce just 30% of your PPE here, regardless of what you pay for it..? It’s an economic driver and, as you said, it mitigates national risk. But I think we’re going to see some changes. This will be the last time this sort of thing goes down.

CHRISTIAN: We’ve talked to individual politicians who are certainly trying to find ways to support it. It feels like a bipartisan issue; it can drive economic growth, maintain national security. It’s also an amplified case of looking at the total cost of ownership instead of a single unit of inventory. I hope that at a policy level we’re able to make that argument for why a cheap price doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the lowest cost option. 

It’s an amplified case of looking at the total cost of ownership instead of a single unit of inventory.

JEN: …that’s right.

CHRISTIAN: I just want to wrap up here with a couple thoughts. Everything we’ve talked about has been taking place in Detroit, but that’s not all we’ve been up to. Maybe you can touch on how we’re anchored in Detroit but are looking at ways we can be a resource across the country?  

JEN: Yes, our efforts are nationwide. As a new institute, they’re limited, but they’re growing. We’ve worked with the CFDA, the Council of Fashion Designers of America; they’ve doubled down on their commitments to supporting US manufacturing. And we’ve worked with the CFDA alongside the NY Economic Development Corporation. We’ve installed curriculum all over the country… Nashville, Seattle. And we’ll be producing for global and American brands. We’re set up for manufacturing now and are committed to finding brands built around sustainability. We don’t believe that if you have a sustainable product that relies on unsustainable lives, that you can rightfully call that a sustainable product. And what we’re finding is that brands are interested in aligning with this.    

CHRISTIAN: There’s one thing we haven’t touched on that I think has been foundational–the idea of equity and employee ownership. We’ve been looking at how you can develop this industry from the ground up with a grassroots approach, but also with partners like Carhartt, like the CFDA, like the mayor’s office. And one of the things we’ve said from the very beginning is that the people who are doing the work need to share in the equity and benefits of that growth. So can you talk a little bit about what the next phase might look like for the manufacturing facility that we’re developing? 

JEN:Yes, I’m so happy to talk about employee equity, it’s such a critical part of our long-term vision. Within the next 18-24 months, we’ll be opening a worker-owned, for-profit satellite facility. What this means is that the people who are working there–and part owners in it–will have a voice in how they want to run their company; they’ll be the stakeholders. There will be room for social impact investors as minority partners, but the employees will be the majority partners. It’s an opportunity to say, ok, we’re going to play a role in changing this industry, and we don’t want to be the only people to benefit from that. You come in through the ISAIC institute, you get trained, you work there for a couple of years, and then you have an opportunity to become an owner. And for sure in Detroit, this is an opportunity that the African American population doesn’t get very often–it just does not get the opportunity to have equity, and, at our core, we believe that workers just have to have more equity, not just in the growth, but in the redefinition of our industry.

CHRISTIAN: As you look at the fashion industry globally, it’s not like there’s not money being made. You hear brands complain that they can’t afford to pay more for products, you hear stories from both workers and factories about getting squeezed, losing huge orders for a penny per piece, and it’s been essentially: how much can the owners of large corporations squeeze out of the people who make the product? They haven’t been able to benefit from an industry that still creates a tremendous amount of wealth. So it feels like a really important step towards saying this needs to be a fundamental shift, not just using technology to produce in the US, but saying that the way that profits in this industry get distributed needs to reflect the contributions that are made at every level. Which is a conversation that America is starting to have across every industry. 

The way that the profits in this industry get distributed needs to reflect the contributions that are made at every level.

JEN: I think that’s right. And the other thing that happens by default when you do that, is that you engage the employee-owners in learning the whole business. And what does that lead to? That often leads to people starting their own businesses. If I go back again to how I started in this business, it’s because I had the benefit of many a business owner teaching me the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, until I bought my own company. The communities we’re looking to serve do not get that opportunity–and there’s no reason why they shouldn’t.

CHRISTIAN: Jen, how can listeners support ISAIC? What does the organization need to continue to grow and develop the work that it’s doing? 

JEN: The way we will grow is really with substantial financial support. Maybe helping us pay for apprenticeships; for example, we provide full benefits, so that’s more than $40,000/year for each apprentice. Buying advanced technology–we need hundreds of thousands of dollars for that. Or supporting manufacturing–if we want to invest in the manufacturing of sustainable materials, we have to buy that material, and, like anything, that is a strain on cash flow, so we need operating support. 

All to say that we need some substantial core support that can help us continue to say yes to the opportunities we have ahead of us. There’s more than we can say yes to right now… and that’s just purely a function of limited resources. 

CHRISTIAN: Jen, thank you so much for your time, it’s been a pleasure as always. I look forward to touching base again and giving an update on some of the work that ISAIC does over the next year. In the meantime, thank you for all the leadership you’ve shown in this organization.  

JEN: Thank you, Christian, it’s been such a joy to work together–and more to come, right?!

This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and length.