PhOtOs cOuRtesy Of aRc'teRyx 156 BCBusiness July 2015
Made in China (and Burnaby)
When to manufacture locally and when to send it abroad: a case study
from local outdoor equipment manufacturer arc'teryx
buzzer sounds, and morning break time
is over. The men and women at Arc'teryx
Equipment Inc.'s garment manufactur-
ing facility in Burnaby stop their casual
chatter and walk briskly back to their
work stations. Suddenly, the air roars
to life with the whirring and churning
of hundreds of machines: fabric cut-
ters, embroidering robots, lamination
presses and sewing machines. Human
flesh turns into a blur, with hands crisply
guiding reams of fabric past racing nee-
dles. Like a magician's act, the workers'
hands seem faster than the human eye,
but at the end appears a jacket or pair of
ski pants instead of a rabbit.
For the past three decades, this
scene has unfolded countless times
at factories all across China as com-
panies from around the world have
sent their product designs there to be
made. Arc'teryx—a North Vancouver-
based manufacturer of cutting-edge
outdoor equipment and clothing, with
700 employees worldwide and sales
in 40 countries—has multiple contract
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