The Mission of The Garden is:

• To provide an onshore option to new designers, small design companies, and small businesses where they can place short- or medium-run orders that are created in compliance with high standards of quality at rates that support growth of The Garden and the customer.  
• To create an environment that promotes understanding of and celebrates diversity, while maintaining the highest business ethics and personal morals.
• To give support to the community and neighborhood wherein the business is located, by providing jobs with salaries and wages that are competitive.
• To employ business practices and methodologies that are motivated by the drive to enhance economic development within the community, rather that corporate profitability. 

 

 The Vision of The Garden is:

• To create a company that is dedicated to the growth and development of its employees, customers, and community.
• To develop a work environment where employees, staff, and managers are fairly compensated and wellness of mind, body, and spirit are a priority.
• To provide access to and availability of benefits and provisions necessary for management, staff, and employees to lead a productive life that allows them to give back to their community.

 

The outsourcing of sewn / soft goods manufacturing to places like China, India, and Pakistan created a number of deficits for both employees and small businesses. 

Not only did people lose their jobs, but small businesses lost the ability to have their products manufactured in America.  Due to the numbers requirements new and small designers and sewn / soft goods wholesalers / retailers are having trouble finding manufactures to create their product in short to medium run projects.

This economic turn left a huge whole in the small business economy and created a vacuum into which many of them were sucked because they didn't have the need or the resources to have their products manufactured in an environment that could process runs as small as 10 or up to 5,000+ without having to go to Asia or elsewhere.  It also created a huge employment problem for people whose highest quality skills revolved around soft goods manufacturing.

The Garden is the result of some brainstorming that will, hopefully, create a solution for both community and business, and lead to a boost in neighborhood economies. 

The name, The Garden, was selected for two reason.  First, because we want to provide a stable work environment for the unemployed who need job training and/or employment in their chosen field.  Second, because we want to help grow the seeds that will give small businesses and new/small, or high-end designers their start.  Third, because, in order for this business to do what we envision, we will go into deprived neighborhoods that need economic influx and offer jobs to local residents who will then be able to spend in their communities and increase their personal economic power.

The company's founder, Laila Salaam, has a 20+-year background in sewing, pattern design, and business management.  The concept for The Garden developed out of a personal knowledge of the need for economic growth and development in deprived neighborhoods, the need for small businesses and designers to have a local company to create their products, and a sincere love for creating high-quality products that any company would be proud to call "Made in America."

She got her start at the age of 12, designing and fashioning her own doll clothes.  This grew into a love for designing and creating clothing and home decor.  At 28, she worked as a sewing machine operator in a small town in Iowa, where she became the 3rd top producer in the sewing department in less than a year.  Her innate ability to enhance efficiency through production layouts on the sewing floor led to increase of up to 35% in production quotas on 5 processes, during that same timeframe.  Laila now wants to give others the opportunity to take advantage of her quality-oriented, community-driven energies.