The factory was expensive.
Its machinery required upgrades.
Certain production methods were slow.
But when his operations specialists studied the underlying records, they noticed something unusual.
The factory's highest-quality products had some of the lowest return rates in the entire company.
Its employees were exceptionally skilled.
And the garments produced there commanded substantially higher prices than comparable mass-produced collections.
The problem wasn't simply labor cost.
It was how the company managed production, inventory, and demand.
Management had been forcing the factory to manufacture products that didn't match its strengths.
Expensive artisans were being assigned repetitive work better suited to automated processes.
Custom orders were delayed by poorly coordinated scheduling.
Defective materials from outside suppliers created costly rework.
And leadership repeatedly blamed factory employees for financial problems originating elsewhere.
Evan recognized the pattern.
The people closest to the work knew what was wrong.
The people making decisions rarely asked them.
That was the first reason he wanted to acquire the business.
The second was personal.
Evan had grown up in a small apartment in Newark, New Jersey.
His mother worked as a seamstress.
His father maintained heating and electrical equipment at a large commercial building.
Neither parent earned much money.
But both believed deeply in doing work properly.
His father used to bring home broken appliances that other people had discarded.
Sometimes he repaired them.
Sometimes he disassembled them to understand why they failed.
Evan spent countless evenings watching him work.
His mother did something similar with clothing.
She repaired wedding dresses, shortened trousers, replaced damaged zippers, and altered expensive garments for customers who often had no idea how much skill the work required.
Sometimes wealthy women arrived carrying designer dresses worth thousands of dollars.
They spoke impatiently.
Complained about prices.
And occasionally treated Evan's mother as though her time mattered less than theirs.
As a boy, Evan hated it.
He remembered one customer especially clearly.
She wore an enormous diamond ring and arrived in a luxury sedan driven by someone else.
She brought a damaged silk gown that needed extensive repairs before a charity gala.
Evan's mother examined the fabric and explained that the work would require several days.
The woman laughed.
“Surely it can't be that difficult.”
His mother remained polite.
“It requires careful stitching.”
The woman rolled her eyes.
“People like you always make simple things complicated.”
Evan was eleven years old.