AST Sportswear/Bayside Apparel with Nadir Zulfiqar, Anthony Miskulim and Roberta Martino
Listen to the Episode:
Contact AST / Bayside
Links Mentioned
Bayside Apparel Video: The True American Tee
Universal Unilink Program Pricing
Transcript
Marty Hartman:
Welcome to the Supplier Spotlight Interview. We are very happy today to have the whole AST Sportswear team with us today. You may know of AST Sportswear and Bayside Apparel, one of the great suppliers in the Universal Unilink Network. And today we have Nadir Zulfiqar who is sales manager. And we also have, joining him, Anthony Miskulim and Roberta Martino, both senior account managers. Welcome to the interview.
Group:
Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you for having us.
Marty Hartman:
Great. So let’s get right into it. So what is Bayside Apparel best known for?
Anthony Miskulim:
So Bayside is best known for offering the largest USA made line of apparel. While others offer maybe one or two items, we offer a full line of garments.
Marty Hartman:
I know you guys are very well known for t-shirts, but what else would you consider to be in that line?
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Marty, what basically people don’t realize is when Anthony speaks and says we have a full line, what that really means is the people come to us for t-shirts, sweatshirts, baseball caps, safety products, performing, tote bags, beanies. We do all of those, all USA made. Where some companies may offer a tote bag or some companies may offer one kind of t-shirt, we have many kinds of t-shirts from lightweight to medium weight to heavyweight to hoodies, 500 gram hoodies to work wear programs. So that’s what a full line means.
Marty Hartman:
I think the important word that you used there, all USA made. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Our tagline is “Dirt to shirt.” I know everybody looks at it as that’s weird, but our tagline is “Dirt to shirt.” What that means that we get all of our cotton from North Carolina, Texas, Louisiana, all the cotton growing parts of America. We bring it into our facility. We knit it ourselves in our own facility, dye it in our own facility, cut it ourselves and sew it ourselves. So that’s what sets us apart of having a hundred percent USA made company where a lot of companies will import the cotton and then they sew the product here. But with us, we don’t import anything. Even our chemicals are US made, our label are US made. Everything that we do is all sourced locally in the United States.
Marty Hartman:
And I think USA made is becoming more and more of an important phrase, especially in the promotional product and corporate apparel world as inventories and shipping is becoming more and more problematic. Where do you see that as an advantage for members buying from Bayside?
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Well, it’s a big advantage to the members to buy things from here because we can turn around things faster, where overseas you’ve got 45 days of shipping, just to say that, with 45 to 60 days. Anthony, one of your customer, wasn’t it doing about 60, 75 days for shipping?
Anthony Miskulin:
And in some cases, even longer than that because of the timeline in production, the shipping, and then the time for customs for inventory to clear. And so yes, it is taking upwards of 60, 90, or in some cases, 120 days.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Where for us, everything is here. It takes about a week for knitting, a week for dyeing, a couple of weeks for stitching, one week for sewing. So four to six weeks, we can actually give you a product or replenish a product that is out of stock. It happens. Right now, we are getting a massive demand. So if you’re out of something, we can move things much faster than most people can because, again, we control everything.
Marty Hartman:
Right. Having that vertical manufacturing really helps when it comes to the inventory. And I think that’s important for our members that have your products in a program. They can rest assured that that product is not going to just disappear from the inventory.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
No, and the other thing with us is what people realize is that we can pivot, like I said, faster than other people can. And we have very low MOQs for custom made products too. Our product can, let me step back a little bit. You can find a product from Walmart to some of the most expensive retailers out there, we’re the only approved manufacturer for Walmart in USA for USA made products. Our product is in Target, JC Penney, Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus, you name it, our product is there because people like seeing that. So when we’re talking about a Bayside product, again, don’t think of it just as a work wear, but think of as work wear to fashion garments, right? Roberta, wouldn’t you say that?
Roberta Martino:
Right. We actually supply to a large range of companies down from corporate to just street wear. We have a wide range of a variety to offer. So we kind of say we’re the one-stop shop, this is where it’s done, this is where it happens. It’s shipped right out of our facility. You can’t say much more than that when it comes to Bayside Apparel.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
And what we would love to say is also if anybody is in Southern California, Robert and Anthony would love to have them come down here and give a tour of our facilities because nobody has seen a total vertical factory in US in years. As you remember, Marty, years ago, there used to be a lot of factories when they went overseas.
Marty Hartman:
Absolutely, yes. Yeah, South Carolina was a very heavy textile industry and within about a 25 year period it just kind of disappeared. So having that come back, we think it’s a very exciting opportunity for the reasons we mentioned, your inventory and keeping it here in the United States, being able to get it. Can you just tell me a little bit more about your low MOQs for custom apparel?
Nadir Zulfiqar:
So with custom apparel, it’s a very simple thing. We have customers who come in and say, “Hey listen guys, we want to test something in a retail market.” They only need maybe 2,400 or 3,600 pieces. We’ll say, “Sure, no problem.” They’ll come to us. They’ll give us their lab dip, which is, let’s say, purple, blue or PMS, whatever the number is. In two to three days, we’ll make the PMFs match, because, again, we control everything. Once they approve it, one week, we’ll knit it, one week, we’ll dye it, and about two weeks we can ship the goods. So 2,400 pieces is not much to talk about. When you go overseas, there is a big number, thousands of pieces. And the other thing we also offer in our private label program is a label change program. Where most people, they’ll cut the label and change it. Being a factory, we open the seam, take our label out, put their label in and sew it together with the same thread so it never looks like it was ever changed. And Roberta, you have accounts like that. They do it what, weekly?
Roberta Martino:
I have many programs doing label change. It just give a distinct look to the garment. It’s more fashionable, you can totally notice that it’s not just cut out. It’s actually sewn in very nicely. It’s presented very nicely as a custom. It’s like your own brand, you custom it. So it sells very well. Once you see it, it’s hard to explain, but once you get a program going and you see it coming in, we can do the label change on the upper collar, we can do it on the bottom end of the shirt. We can also do a label change on the sleeve as well. So it presents the garment very, very well. Very sophisticated as a custom shirt for that particular customer.
Marty Hartman:
That’s a fantastic opportunity. So you mentioned your manufacturing facility in California. You have other manufacturing facilities, I believe, around the country.
Anthony Miskulin:
Actually, Marty, all of our facilities are located here in Southern California. And just to offer up a sheer size of our company, we have approximately 500,000 square feet of facility space between our four facilities.
Marty Hartman:
Wow. Okay. So a lot of things happening there. Now, you mentioned “Dirt to shirt.” I think that’s a great concept from the cotton to the final shirt, everything here in the United States. And that makes a lot of sense for cotton apparel, but what about other materials? What’s available from Bayside?
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Well, we kind of like to stay within our core. So the materials that we like to use, because we stock the yarn here so it’s easier. So we do a hundred percent cotton, tri-blend, 50/50, 50/50 tri-blend, 60/40s. We just don’t do any pimas or supima cotton, but we do moisture wicking polyester. Those items we do. We do canvas. But other than that, we don’t try to go outside our line because those are the yarns that we are stocking. If there’s a specialty yarn that you have to import it, which we don’t believe in it, or get it in US that’s really hard to get, like recycled or organic are really hard to get so we have stayed away from them for now. Down the road we will add, but right now we are staying away from there.
Marty Hartman:
Gotcha. So union made, is that something that you offer as an option for people looking for that?
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Right. So what we do is we have a factory which we own. It’s a Teamsters certified factory with Teamsters members in there. So we offer a deep inventory of our union made product. We have a t-shirt, a sweatshirt, a beanie right now in there that we continuously stock and we ship out every day. Now, one of the things that we do offer, which most companies don’t offer, is if somebody wants a tri blend, let’s just say that, as a union made, we can make that in our union factory easily with a low MOQ. That way they’re not just stuck with four or five items that are union made items.
Marty Hartman:
Right, and I know we have members that are working with, for example, political campaigns and things like that. That’s always a hot button issue whenever you’re running for office.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Right. So our USA made, a lot of the Democratic Party right now, they prefer union made. And we are very, very busy with our union factory. Anthony, you have political clients that you handle so would you like to speak about that?
Anthony Miskulin:
Definitely. So because of our union facilities, we’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the front runners in the Democratic National Party as well as the Republican National Party.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
And then the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. We’ve done a lot of those products for them.
Marty Hartman:
I think that’s great. Whether you’re a red or blue state, you can get it from Bayside. I think that’s great.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Yeah, we are not politically affiliated with anybody. As long as they support made in USA, we are good to go.
Marty Hartman:
Yeah, I think that’s great.
Roberta Martino:
Yeah, that’s our main focus is that US made. Our main goal here is we like to keep our jobs here. This is where we like to offer a unique style that we have here at Bayside. And our main goal is to keep jobs here in the USA.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Yes, it was a thing that, like what we always say is, when you buy a USA made product, it could be shirts or something else out there, the money stays here and creates more jobs than buying imports where the money goes overseas.
Marty Hartman:
I agree. I think that’s a great concept. So you talked about some of the fantastic options that people can get from Bayside. Is it possible to get samples in hand?
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Yes.
Roberta Martino:
Yes, you can actually contact Anthony or myself. We are the key point contacts here for you guys, for Universal Unilink. So they can either reach out to Anthony, to myself. I’ll provide you my email, I think you already have Anthony’s, and we can take the samples from there. And they can send them to us, they can give us a call or they can email us, whichever they prefer. Whichever.
Marty Hartman:
Okay, great. So what about catalogs and marketing materials? Is that something that’s available to our members as well?
Roberta Martino:
Yes, and that too, as well, they can give Anthony or myself a call. We can answer any questions. As when it comes to the catalogs, we can send those out. For the marketing, they can go onto our website. You can download the marketing tools. If they need help we can guide them through that. Just give us a call.
Marty Hartman:
Great. So a lot of tools available for anyone interested in any of your products.
Roberta Martino:
Yeah, on our website.
Marty Hartman:
Great. So your website, go ahead and give that out for the listeners.
Roberta Martino:
www.astsportswear.com. And my direct email is rmartino… No, I’m so sorry.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Actually, I’ll give you an easier one. We have created a new one. It’s roberta@astsportswear.com or anthony@astsportswear.com. They work as a team so they can actually handle any of your client’s requests or calls or projects. They work on projects also, on private label projects.
Marty Hartman:
Gotcha. So you’ll get the whole team working on your project if you need them. So as we’re starting to wrap up, what else do our listeners need to know about AST Sportswear or Bayside Apparel?
Anthony Miskulin:
Great question. So the one thing I’d like to leave the listeners with, to let them know that they can purchase our apparel for smaller size orders through wholesalers like Alphabroder, S&S. Or for medium to larger size orders, they can always get that factory direct price by buying direct from Bayside.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
And they can log in and check our inventory or they can place orders online. We have the same software as anybody else out there so it just makes it easier. Or you’re welcome to call Anthony, these guys are here. We are all here from 6:30 in the morning till about 7, 7:30 in the evening. And we are also available on Saturdays. So we are available to work with them.
Marty Hartman:
Well, we appreciate you wanting to work and be flexible for our members and any of our other listeners. We hope that you take advantage of all the capabilities of the AST and Bayside teams.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
We would love to invite any of your members who are ever in Southern California to come and visit us. Honestly, I tell you, when you come and see our facilities, you come and see how shirts are actually made from scratch, it’s really an amazing facility to see. You see the yarn being knitted into fabric. Then dyeing, the process, then cutting it, sewing it, stitching it, all the process is very unique. We would love to invite anybody who is ever in Southern California, come and see us.
Marty Hartman:
I hope that our members take you up on your offer. I think that would be a great opportunity. Thank you all very much for your time. Go ahead, Roberta.
Roberta Martino:
Also too, we have a video that… I’m not sure if Anthony has already sent that, or not, out. I know he uses that tool a lot. So this is a video that shows the insight of how we start to finish, how it’s processed. It kind of gives you more of an idea of what we do here and what our capabilities are. So I could send that to you or Anthony. You could share that with your team. It’s a very beneficial, it’s educational, and I can guarantee you will be, “Wow, they do all that in that facility?” And then it’s true, it’s a one-stop shop here at Bayside. So I’ll send that video out to you and share it with your team. Again, it’s very beneficial and it’s very educational. It gives you more of an insight of what we do here at Bayside and what we offer.
Marty Hartman:
Thank you very much. We’ll make sure that we include a link to that in our transcript and also in the description on all of our platforms where people are listening to this podcast.
Roberta Martino:
Okay.
Marty Hartman:
Thank you once again for your time.
Roberta Martino:
You’re welcome. Thank you.
Marty Hartman:
And we hope that our members take advantage.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
We would love to. We would love to see them here.
Roberta Martino:
Yeah, we’re ready to get started here.
Nadir Zulfiqar:
Thank you, Marty. Thank you for the support you guys are giving us too.
Anthony Miskulin:
Thanks, Marty. Have a good day.
Infinite Laundry