When the Japan-based manufacturing company SWANY, founded in 1937 by Tomio Miyoshi, began to expand its operations globally, it started SWANY America Corporation in New York City in 1980. However, it wasn’t long before the company moved its North American operation to Fulton County.
As shipping and handling costs from its commercial warehouse in New Jersey skyrocketed, SWANY began looking for alternative locations. Several factors drew the company to Fulton County.
Gloversville’s reputation as the glove-making capital of the world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was one factor. In its heyday, Gloversville was home to 200 tanneries whose employees, representing 80 percent of the city’s population, produced or vended 90 percent of all gloves sold in the United States. With that history, Fulton County was a natural location for SWANY.
Financial incentives from the former New York State Economic Development Enterprise Zones program totaled $2 million. That, along with assistance from the Fulton County Center for Regional Growth’s forerunner, the Fulton County Economic Development Corporation, prompted SWANY to build a new distribution warehouse in Fulton County.
Also appealing was the county’s reputation for having a skilled workforce with a strong work ethic. “SWANY could secure abundant labor forces, and labor cost at Fulton County was also very low at that time,” said SWANY America President Ichiro Kuwahara.
A FOUNDATION ALREADY IN PLACE
It was the third-generation glove-making company Elmer Little & Sons in particular that caught SWANY executives’ attention. The company was founded in 1893. It has endured the shifting manufacturing landscape in the region, adapting and changing to meet current consumers’ wants.
Owner Bill Dzierson is an avid skier and grandson of Elmer Little & Sons’ founder. He began developing high-quality ski gloves that provided more warmth and durability than this market had ever seen before. In 1987, SWANY acquired Elmer Little & Sons. It launched the SWANY Ski Division three years later to continue Dzierson’s work crafting high-quality ski gloves.
Even though SWANY’s ski gloves cost twice that of competitors, it did not deter skiers from buying them. As part of a robust marketing campaign, SWANY contracted with the Professional Ski Instructors of America and the National Ski Patrol to supply gloves for the organizations.
In 1992, SWANY sponsored gloves and suits for speed skiing teams from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Switzerland. Speed skiers clad in SWANY’s suits and gloves flew down French mountains at speeds of up to 138 miles per hour at the speed skiing demonstrations of the 1992 Albertville Olympics.
The marketing strategy worked, and SWANY’s ski and mountaineering glove business began to grow. SWANY’s team continually develops new designs based on changing textile technology and customers’ wants. For example, in 2000, the company introduced its crossover gloves. They are complete with a ventilating system that can cool the wearer on warm days and house a heat pack on cold ones.
Kim Cummings, general manager and controller for SWANY America, has been with the company since 1989. When she first started, the company purchased local leather for gloves, and initial parts were made in the company’s Johnstown facility. Since then, the Fulton County location has become the company’s warehouse and distribution facility for North America, including its Canadian division, established by SWANY in 1990.
In November of each year, the Johnstown facility places orders to SWANY’s factories in China, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia for the sales it anticipates for the season. A second order follows in a few months. This gives the factories a lead time of three to four months to produce the gloves. Then, the overseas factories ship the gloves to Canada and truck drivers transport them to Johnstown. “By September or October, we hope everything is here for us to ship for the entire year,” Cummings said.
“The ocean time from China or Indonesia is shorter to get up to Canada that way,” Cummings said, noting that it takes from 45 to 60 days for Johnstown to receive a shipment.
The facility’s 12 employees are busy from September to February packaging and shipping gloves to anywhere from 500 to 600 retail customers in the United States and 125 to 150 in Canada.
Customers can also order from SWANY’s website, and the Johnstown facility operates an outlet store from November through February where customers can shop in person.e warehouse, preparing for the next shipping cycle.
Retail sales per year are close to $24 million, Cummings said, between its mainstays, the SWANY brand and its “Hot Fingers” line, a name the company acquired in 2004, plus additional products. During COVID, sales remained constant with no decline. Cummings attributes this in part to the company’s customer service. “Our customers have been very loyal to us, and we try to treat them as we would want to be treated,” she said.
During its busy season, it is all hands on deck. “Everybody knows how to do just about everything,” Cummings said. “You just pick up another hat, and you just roll.” During the off-season, employees take inventory and organize the warehouse, preparing for the next shipping cycle.
The family aspect of her job, which originated from the time of Elmer Little & Sons, is what Cummings enjoys the most. “Everybody’s tight knit here,” she said. “It’s kind of like you’re working with family.”
The employees are a mix of workers from the local area and Japan, with the two cultures blending together and learning from one another. “In Japan, they’re very work-oriented,” Cummings said. “Their base is their job. When they become culturally familiar with us, they realize that family is very important to us. I think they learn as much from us as we do from them, I would say.”
SWANY’s growth may have it adding more employees to its Fulton County workforce. “Based on an increase of online business demand, we may need more labor force for the distributing operation in our warehouse in the near future,” Kuwahara said.
Cummings said that employee retention has been high. There has also been continuity in leadership. SWANY America president Ichiro Kuwahara was in the role when SWANY first started out in the United States and remained in that position for eight years. After some years in Japan, he returned to Johnstown as president again.
SWANY is continually developing products to expand its offerings. “We always try to find a new niche that we can go into,” Cummings said. “They always try to find an expansion of where we can go with our gloves. There’s never a standstill here. There’s always something going on.”
No matter what the reason…
Fulton County has a beauty all its own. making it your ideal destination to call home.
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