Worker’s safety has become the number one issue as the mining and construction industry develops rapidly. Carhartt, a well known American work wear brand that brought new safety standards to the world is officially opening in Mongolia. The following interview is with the director of the company Rick Fecowicz.We understand that Carhartt is now officially in Mongolia. Can you give us brief introduction?Carhartt is a 123 year old, family owned company. It is based in Detroit, Michigan and now managed by the fourth generation of the Carhartt family. Carhartt has its own wholly owned factories in Kentucky and also in Mexico. Carhartt manufactures approximately 60 percent of our apparel in our own factories. The balance of Carhartt products are made in contracted factories throughout Central America and Asia. Carhartt is known as a premium work wear brand in United States. Its products are known for durability, quality, comfort and fit. Carhartt also represents terrific value in work wear. Carhartt has always manufactured work wear for the working man, which is how Carhartt got started. Hamilton Carhartt, who founded the company, began by interviewing railway workers who told him that they wanted work wear that was more durable and would last longer. So, Hamilton went back to his factory where he designed and manufactured overalls for these railway workers, and that’s how Carhartt got started. Today Carhartt still follows many of the principles that Hamilton Carhartt talked about, such as “doing the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do”, in addition to ensuring that work wear which Carhartt sells continues to be very high quality and represent good value to our consumers.
How many countries do you distribute to and what kind of work wear do you make?Carhartt is represented throughout Europe, through a wholly owned subsidiary based in Amsterdam which distributes Carhartt work wear throughout Europe. Carhartt also has distributors in Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, here in Mongolia and Canada as well. Carhartt is truly a worldwide work wear brand. Carhartt has four core industries which we target: farming, mining, construction and ranching. Carhartt also has an industrial division which sells FR (Flame Retardant) and high visibility clothing. It’s important to note that Carhartt work wear is available for both men and women.
It is really good timing for Carhartt to enter Mongolian market as right now mining and all the other sectors are starting to develop. There is concept that you have to know safety coding. What does safety coding really mean?
Well there are two things. Our industrial division represents flame retirement clothing, that meets NFPA 70E and NFPA 2112 standards. These standards have been developed by the National Fire Protection Association in United States to protect against flash fire that may result from an electrical power surge. Carhartt’s high visibility clothing, which is available in either bright orange or bright green with 3M Scotchlight reflective stripes, allows workers to be more visible, especially when you have so much heavy equipment moving around on a mining site.
It is interesting to hear about industrial clothing. You mentioned about ranching, farming clothing. What is the difference?
Carhartt is very well known for our heavy duty brown duck canvas fabric, which Carhartt developed with a fabric mill in the United States. The basis for all of Carhartt’s heavy duty work wear products are high quality, durable fabrics that do not easily rip or tear. Additionally, what we refer to as the “Carhartt difference” is that we put certain features into our clothing in order to make them more durable and safe. As an example, all Carhartt products use heavy duty YKK zippers, which are the best zippers in the world. We know that workers are going to use Carhartt clothing in very rough environments, and we want to be sure that our clothing holds up, because we know that the worker cannot run home to get new clothing if a fabric tears or a zipper fails. It is very important that Carhartt products last a long time and our consumers are happy with the value that Carhartt products represent. Carhartt’s product design teams spend a lot of time talking to workers to better understand how they will use Carhartt clothing. They use the information they gather from workers to design products that will best meet worker’s needs for work wear that is comfortable, durable and long lasting. Our customers tell us that their view the Carhartt work wear as another tool on the job, so it’s important that Carhartt work wear to be very high quality and perform very well for them.