Firstly, traditional tie manufacturers are a very small breed of people anywhere around the world.

South Africa is not unique in having minimal tie manufacturers available to make a decent school tie,

It seems that there is a shortage the whole world through with China bridging the gap for Europe. This is the reason why most tie manufacturers are present in China and not the rest of the world, the main reason being that every tie manufacturer in China has many more competent people available to make ties.

The emphasis being on competent because in order to be a decent tie manufacturer, one has to have properly trained and committed staff who are able to carry out the task on hand that required by the tie manufacturer to put together something that is visibly attractive, well balanced, properly sewn using the correct methods and not least of all done with absolute professionalism and competence.

Tie manufacturers often battle to find staff worldwide because most tie manufacturers are small factories as opposed to larger factories which reduces a persons opportunities to grow in the business but often to work in the factory of a tie manufacturer is not that cool, most aspirant seamstresses and the male version thereof want to be sewing funky garments with proper brand names so perhaps it is that for a tie manufacturer, the challenge of finding good, committed staff remains because it may no longer be seen as cool.

Tie manufacturers also have the added challenge of training their staff in one specific discipline and this is also why tie manufacturers do find it such a challenge because they are only able to train in one discipline which make the employee of the tie manufacturer less qualified and less able to get another job in another factory as they are competing against potential job earners who have experience in the manufacture of other clothing items and not just that of working for a tie manufacturer.

Also, added to this is the fact that the work can tend to become a little mundane and lose its challenge after a while.

So, whilst being in the employ of a specialist tie manufacturer can be hugely beneficial as it really is a wonderful craft to know and very much superior to that of many clothing styles of manufacture, it can also be limited working for a tie manufacturer as proper dedicated tie manufacturers don’t make anything else in their factories.

This then leads me to where many tie manufacturers seem to be going in their thought process with regards to shoring up and protecting their businesses and also creating the opportunity to grow both in their output but also their turnover and thus their profits.

So it is, that many tie manufacturers have introduced parallel medium production lines which operate either at the same time as the tie manufacturer line or operate when there for example may not be any work on the tie side of the business and I can assure you that this does happen as for many tie manufacturers it can be a case of “Duck or no dinner” due very much to the fact that the tie industry can be quite seasonal.

So with this in mind, many tie manufacturers are securing the future of their businesses by introducing other lines into their factories that sometimes compliment tie manufacture but very often don’t.

The benefit of this is that they have more options, the downside is that they are no longer dedicated tie manufacturer.