Garment industry expert David Birnbaum encouraged small and medium-sized factories in the DR to join efforts to become the new generation of the local garment industry. Birnbaum is in the DR consulting with the Dominican government to help Dominican apparel companies refit for the 21st century.   
 Birnbaum spoke during a workshop sponsored by the CEI-RD and the Dominican Association of Free Zones, as part of a program to relaunch the local garment industry funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank. Birnbaum stressed that volume contracting is a model in decline for the DR. He said that the sliding of Dominican exports has more to do with the fact the industry model is obsolete, rather than with the present financial difficulties or the overvalued peso.   
 Birnbaum alerted that the DR cannot compete to produce low cost items such as trousers or cotton T-shirts with low labor costs in Bangladesh, Cambodia or China. "It is not a question anymore of reviving the industry. It is a question of building a new industry," he said.   
 He encouraged Dominicans to build an industry based on the assets the industry already has. "The Dominican Republic probably makes the best quality garments in the region, and has the most skilled workers," said Birnbaum. "Middle management is good, senior management sucks," he said. "You should be producing fashion goods, small quantities, many orders, high value-added, high-profit goods," he said, motivating a complete change in production strategies.   
 "If you have an industry that is based on fashion goods, then all things you have in the DR make sense," he explained. He says these are proximity to the US to move goods fast, DR-CAFTA for the tariff advantage." In other words, he says these things start to make sense once you get away from cotton knit underwear that has no production time limit and you move into fashion goods.  
 Birnbaum is motivating a group of 8 to 55 factories that want to produce high quality garments to get together. These need to take advantage of speed to market and then be ready to travel abroad with them to find better quality customers.   
 Birnbaum stresses the customers for Dominican factories are not Walmart, Kmart or Sears. Go to Dillands, Nordstrom, he says. "People who have a need and can pay for the product."   
 But he explains once the switch to high quality exports is made, Dominican factories will have to also evolve into being service suppliers. He explained that traditionally, local factories have relied on the "customer doing everything." But he says to survive in today's industry, service needs to be provided, and this starts with the designer. The DR needs to focus on producing small quantities of many styles, and to do this, it is necessary to get together a group of people and factories to develop the new skill sets that are needed to service the customer.   
 As part of his team's consulting services, they have moved on a facility that will expedite the facility under DR-CAFTA from 6 months to 30-40 days that enables companies to short supply quality fabric for duty-free access to the US. Group purchases of fabric is foreseen and these would be accessible to the participating factories.