Darn It! Press
WGBH | Greater Boston with Emily Rooney | December 09, 2008
A New Bedford, Mass., company that repairs new clothes
Listen to the full show here.
South Coast Today | August 14, 2008
Busting at the seams, apparel firm snags another city location
NEW BEDFORD — A city company that solves other businesses' problems with messed-up apparel orders, distribution difficulties and warehousing needs has outgrown its South End quarters and is moving to a North End factory recently purchased for $1.65 million.
Darn It! Inc. has grown so robust since it began in the mid-1990s it recently purchased the 314,000-square-foot Fibre Leather Manufacturing building at 630-686 Belleville Ave. The company — whose slogan is "Your problem is our business" — plans to rename it the "Darn It! Building" and spend another $1 million-plus on improvements.
Fibre Leather closed up shop in the city last year and moved its operations away.
Darn It!, which started with a handful of employees, now has 110 full-time workers in 175,00-square-foot rented space in the former Berkshire Hathaway mill off Harbor Street. It will be moving in phases to its new space in the next one to two years.
The move marks a homecoming of sorts for Jeffrey Glassman, president of Darn It!, and his father, Norman Glassman. It was to 630 Belleville Ave. that their relatives first came to New Bedford in the 1930s to work in the apparel business and held jobs at New Bedford Manufacturing Co., makers of pajamas for men and women.
Read or download the full South Coast Today article.
The CommonWealth | Vol 22, No. 1 Spring 2008
Former New Bedford Clothing Manufacturer Thrives as Clothing Refinisher in the Global Economy
"We will do anything that it takes to meet the challenges of our business customers," insists Jeff Glassman '90. The Isenberg School alumnus is president of Darn It! Inc., a fast-growing New Bedford, Massachusetts provider of diverse services to the apparel industry. The business also doubles as a warehouser and pick/pack distribution node for apparel and general merchandise.
A November visit to the firm by The CommonWealth revealed an ordinary day of diverse projects and nonstop activity. On its cavernous floor (Darn It!’s combined factory and warehouse occupies 140,000 square feet), scores of workers operated sewing and embroidery machines; unpacked and reboxed shoes; sorted, pressed, and stored dresses and sport jackets; and spot cleaned and altered garments.
Half a dozen women sat at sewing tables replacing buttons with snaps on polo shirts sporting a Fortune 500 logo. A second group of Darn It! employees replaced mislabeled sweaters with new labels identifying their contents as 100% luxury cashmere. And a third cluster of workers used black magic markers to X out information on the labels of children’s pajamas. “None of our machines and work tables are bolted down. We can move and reconfigure operations on a dime,” notes Jeff.
Read or download the full The CommonWealth article.
New Bedford Economic Development Council | October 12, 2007
Darn It! A company’s transformation retains jobs
An “Extreme Makeover” of Ronnie Manufacturing in 1996 transformed the 35-year-old contract clothing business into a unique operation that solves quality control and logistical problems caused by offshore manufacturing.
Darn It! was created in response to a dilemma facing the 350-employee, family-owned plant: the wave of outsourcing that was draining the U.S. garment industry. “The old adage - ‘when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,’ is fitting, according to Darn It! President Jeffrey Glassman.
Glassman and his father Norman made the bold decision to change the operation’s focus and the result today is a thriving, growing business with more than 120 employees occupying 140,000 square feet on 92 Harbor Street in New Bedford in the former Berkshire Hathaway mill complex.
Darn It!’s client list includes major retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, importers, catalogue retailers and liquidation companies.
The idea for the business sprung up from the fact that many of their customers in the mid 1990s began sending their cut-and-sew productions offshore instead of to Ronnie Manufacturing, Glassman recalled. However, when the products came back to New England, they had quality problems ranging from poor stitching and packaging to incorrectly sewn labels.
“There was no time for them to send the products back to the original factory as their customers (the retailers) could possibly cancel the order if the delivery date was not met. So our old customers began sending their foreign made products to us to fix and refurbish for them. We would inspect, repair and send them the product back quickly so they could meet their delivery deadlines,” he explained.
Read the full New Bedford Economic Development Council article.
