1. THE CHAIN - All companies compete as supply chains. And all links in your chain compete as supply chains. To make mens elastic waistbands, one elastic producing AAPN member maintains 735 items in inventory from 36 vendors. Many still manage the business as though we were all in different businesses. We aren’t. AAPN meets as an end-to-end supply chain. Members interact with people they would not otherwise meet, have conversations that cut across silos and get critical ‘insider’ information that gives them an economic advantage.

2. APPAREL IQ - Good intelligence about the world has never been more critical. The chain has intelligence about the industry. In an age when all companies and many professionals are one tweet away from disaster, the AAPN is a place to help you learn forward because none of us is as smart as all of us. You make your mind brighter by rubbing and polishing it against the minds of others. As Martin Fischer wrote, "Information is the act of finding facts; knowledge is a process of piling them up; wisdom lies in their simplification”.

WAY back in 2008, Fortune published this article which applies to you this very minute:

Be A Better Networker

In this troubled economy, finding your next job (or not) may depend on your having a strong circle of people you can call on, and who know they can call on you.

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- You've heard or read it a thousand times (including in this very space): To supercharge your career, particularly when times get tough, you need a big, strong network of professional contacts -- people you can call on, and who know they can call on you, for advice, information, referrals, and introductions.

But many smart professionals are flummoxed when it comes to figuring out exactly how to get such a network started, and how to make their network grow and flourish.

"Networking is one of those things that some people naturally 'get' and others don't," says Ivan R. Misner, founder and CEO of BNI (www.bni.com), a worldwide networking organization with more than 110,000 members in 39 countries. "One metaphor I like is that most people treat networking like hunting - they're out there trying to bag the big one - but it's really a lot more like farming. You have to cultivate relationships over time."
You won't learn how in college, or even in B-school, Misner notes: "Most professors have never run a business, or had to figure out how to rise through the ranks in a big company, so they really don't understand how critical it is."

A survey of 2,200 BNI members found that 87% never had a college course that even mentioned networking - "and we're not talking about entire courses on the subject, which are rarer than unicorns, but any course that even briefly brushed on the subject," Misner says. "Yet, in another of our surveys, of more than 3,800 businesspeople worldwide, 73% said they get most of their business through networking."

While preparing slides for our Dallas Regional Conference next week, we went over mountains of data we maintain here. The core data is, of course, our membership.

We have over 160 dues-paying members and another 31 from the industry (magazines, trade shows, universities, associations, government, etc).

In 2007, we hosted our last of 5 AAPN CAFTA SUMMIT conferences. Barbara Zeins, who serves on our Board and is President of Gerson & Gerson in New York, was on the agenda. She gave the following talk. I am afraid I have lost the original, therefore some of the notes are mine, not hers. Nonetheless, she blew the top out of the assumptions so many make about sourcing.

You see, Barbara imports massive numbers of designer little girls dresses. (see for yourself by clicking here) She works with hundreds of retailers. More than almost anyone we have ever met, she exercises true Full Value Costing. She is one of the brightest and most practically academic minds in the industry so it occured to me this morning to share the following with you. HAVE a great weekend!

Exchange from the TV show LAW & ORDER, by Detective Lennie Briscoe:
Lab technician (trying to establish the age of a skeleton): "Once we get the chemical analysis, we can narrow it down."
Lennie: "Great. When you get an answer, give me a call at the retirement home."

It made me think of the micro-factory we profiled for AAPN member Next Wave last week. Anyone can analyze then buy one, but how long does it take to learn the operations of apparel production needed to maximize the investment?