"It's a very niche market it's in the laundry and dry cleaning supply business."
Company owner Tal Cloud just brought the Mexican company that made Trouser Guards and other clothes hanging products, and moved it all to Fresno. The workers in Mexico had to stay behind and Cloud is adding at least a dozen positions in his Fresno plant to do the work.
"We have great employees in Fresno, and we think it's a great place to do business from so we chose to bring all the equipment back to Fresno and hire locally." Cloud said.
Foreman Frank Diaz is doing the hiring. "Mostly I'm looking for people that have some kind of production, warehouse type of work, people with that kind of experience, pretty much packing houses, warehousing."
The machinery from Mexico has been up and running for about two weeks. It cuts, steams and folds the trouser guards. Eva Venegas a mother of four is at the other end packing about 25 thousand trouser guards into boxes every hour. She told us: "When I started the job it was like hard, but now it's like, getting easy... that new machine that they bring."
These are products you don't even think about, but they come home with you from the dry cleaner. They include a cardboard form for shirts and jackets and a trouser guard for pants.
"And we compete with China, Taiwan and Asia as well as one competitor on the east coast now, so we're comfortable about being in Fresno."
Cloud says his company is suddenly among the world's biggest producers of these unusual products and he's already shipping Trouser Guards around the world from Fresno.
Cloud said, "A lot of people, my friends thought I was crazy. They thought I should be moving to Mexico or someplace else but our business is in Fresno, we want to make it our home for a long time."
In addition to hiring local people, the move from Mexico has meant work for a variety of Fresno companies installing and setting up the machinery.
All of the paper products are made from recycled paper purchased from plants in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Helping to keep more jobs in California.
