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Tony in action: finding shelf space for fabric! The picture to the right is Tony’s cutting machine.
Hello again, my fabric friends! Thank you for taking the time to visit us at The Works! I’d like to bring you another installment of the Wonderful Folks of the Works. Last month, we introduced you to Debbie, the shipper. This month, we’re going to work our way back a bit behind the scenes here at Clothworks.
Have you ever wondered about the origins of that bolt of fabric that you unpack from the Clothworks box that your shipper delivers to you? Or the bolt of Clothworks fabric that you pull off the shelf at your favorite fabric store and have yardage cut from it? Well, the next person that I’m going to introduce you to has an integral hand in bringing that fabric from roll to bolt! Meet Tony, the warehouse manager.
Having only worked here at Clothworks for a year, Tony sure knows his way around a fabric wholesale warehouse! It must be those previous 16 years spent working for Kona Bay, a fellow fabric wholesale company based in Seattle. Tony’s main responsibilities include keeping in the loop of production planning, receiving shipments of fabric, making sure goods go out in a timely manner, and cutting loads of fabric. He is a fabric cutting machine! Not only does he work closely with the order department to determine when fabric shipments will be coming to the warehouse & what fabric quantities to cut for the orders, he has to figure out a way to organize the warehouse in order to hold all of the fabric. It takes patience and quick reasoning to make this happen. And it also takes a lot of energy and strength to move these heavy, cumbersome wide rolls of fabric!
To explain a bit more about this process, Tony is notified from the port when a shipment of fabric is ready to be delivered to our warehouse. The fabric is delivered by a large semi-truck & arrives wrapped in plastic, on large rolls, with several yards of fabric on each roll. If Tony is already in the process of cutting a fabric collection while this new fabric shows up, Tony and his warehouse team must figure out where they will store the fabric and how to stage it. I’ve seen Tony take a whole day to just unload a truck, organize a place in the warehouse, and stack fabric for staging. Once the fabric is ready to be cut on to bolts, Tony will load it into the cutting machine and cut according to the cut sheets given to him by the order dept. His responsibility is to cut as many 15 yard bolts and 10 yard bolts as needed per the cutting sheet. Fabric is cut and rolled onto cardboard reels. Once all the bolts are cut, they are organized by sku # on the shelves, ready to be picked and shipped out to you, the customer!
Tony’s favorite part of working at Clothworks is the people. In his own words- Everyone here is nice and a great group of people to work with. In his free time- you can find Tony enjoying what the great outdoors has to offer (it must be because he’s cooped up in the warehouse all day at Clothworks). If you meet Tony outside, you might find him camping, golfing, or practicing his Frisbee golf skills. And if Tony’s not hanging out in the great wild, he is perfectly content to work on a puzzle or brain-teaser…..I guess that helps keep his brain in check for when he has to figure out how to organize all those massive rolls of fabric in the warehouse. But if Tony were ever stranded on a desert island…..please make sure there’s a coffee maker there, or else he might go off the deep end!
