A (Hong Kong?) Shoemaker Opened a Tiny Factory in Tennessee

choi

James R Hagerty, Shoemaking Gets a Foot in the Door in US. Wall Street Journal, July 14, 2014.
online.wsj.com/articles/shoemaking-gets-a-foot-in-the-door-in-the-u-s-1405294724

Quote:

“Loretta LEE * * *founder and chairwoman of Hong Kong-based Merchant House International Ltd

“Today, Ms Lee has two boot factories in Tianjin and a plant in Shunde, China, that makes kitchen towels and other home textiles. She intends to keep them. Although some Chinese shoe producers have moved to lower-cost Vietnam or Bangladesh, Ms Lee chose to open a plant in the US. ‘Closer to the market, you know what consumers want,’ she said. Her initial US investment, to acquire and equip the plant in Jefferson City, is just $5 million, though she aims to double that over the next two years. For now, the plant employs only about 50 people.'

“To keep costs low, she installed German equipment to make and attach urethane soles. An orange robot ‘roughs,’ or scrapes, leather to prepare it for adhesion to the sole. That part of the plant is much more automated than her Chinese boot factories * * * Cutting and sewing leather is done manually. Footwear styles often change, and it would be prohibitively expensive to reprogram and reconfigure robots each time that happens.

Note:
(a) Jefferson City, Tennessee
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_City,_Tennessee
(b) The workshop in Jefferson City, Tenn is also named Merchant House International Ltd, which opened in September 2013.
(c) Try as I may, I can not find the Chinese names of both Ms Lee (English full name: “Loretta BH LEE”) and Merchant House International Ltd (whose stock is sold at Australian Securities Exchange (ASX; base in Sydney)).
(d) After so many days, WSJ has not translated this report into Chinese. I do not think it ever will.