The New Fabric of Success

"Fernando and I know almost everybody in this organization," says Capellán de Lama. "People are allowed to come to our offices, no matter what position they hold. Fernando spends a lot of time on the factory floor. He has breakfast with factory workers. He gathers 15 to 20 operators once or twice a week and he talks to them to see how they are feeling, and as soon as he leaves the breakfast, he finds a way to solve their problems."

Capellán is revered by workers throughout Grupo M -- in part because he treats them well financially, but also because he remains approachable. The company's "board," which consists of an executive manager from each division, still meets every day over lunch to discuss problems. "Our board works so closely that we are more like a family than like a group of managers. We can fight and yell but still be friends," Capellán says. "We can do that because we all deeply respect each other."

Capellán de Lama observes: "Everybody follows Fernando because he doesn't work for himself, he works for the team, for everybody. He never says, 'This is my place,' or 'This is my money,' or 'This is my project.' He thinks of everything as one big project that everybody is working on, so he gives credit to everybody. It's a democratic business."

Perhaps, at times, it's a little too democratic. Recently, the company was looking for a catchy brand name for a new line of clothing that it wanted to sell locally. Everyone in the company -- from operators to executives -- voted on a list of choices. Capellán de Lama sneaked a word onto the list that had been her brother's nickname when he was a teenager. To Capellán's chagrin, the surreptitious entry prevailed. Asked to explain the word's meaning, he chuckles and blushes. "When I was a kid in military school, I had to shave my head like everybody else," he says. "And my head is sort of irregularly shaped, so others in the school used to call me 'batatia.' " Translation: sweet-potato head.

Designing a New Business Pattern

Capellán de Lama's latest assignment is draped over the back of a chair in her office -- a pair of men's khaki pants. She turns the pants inside out to show off a unique feature: the pockets are made of open-meshed nylon instead of woven cotton, which means that the fabric at the hip lies smoother than cotton would, and that the pants are cooler to wear in hot weather. "Fernando dropped these off this week,"

Capellán de Lama says. "He bought them while he was traveling; I have no idea where. I'm supposed to find a source for this fabric so that we can offer it to our customers." Capellán is heading toward a new area of business: Invent new products; solve customers' problems. Once, companies such as Grupo M simply assembled garments from patterns, cut cloth, and designs that manufacturers provided. It was low-skill, thin-margin work. Now, larger apparel brands come to Grupo M with a design sketch and expect the company to source material, to cut cloth, and to provide scaled pattern sizes. That change has required a heavy investment in technology for Grupo M that includes pattern-cutting machines and design software that computes size scaling, as well as investment in training so that workers can use that new equipment.

Ultimately, Capellán believes that all garment makers will have to take on such work in order to survive. But Grupo M was one of the first. "We send Grupo M a base pattern at the beginning of the season," says Bob Zane, of Liz Claiborne, "when we're starting with a new style, and they do everything necessary to get the pattern to meet our specifications. When nobody else in this hemisphere was even thinking about providing those services, Fernando was making investments in computer equipment and hiring staff."

At Grupo M's new-products division, which Capellán de Lama runs, sketches of models and of clothing adorn the walls. The drawings are the work of employees, many of whom are graduates of a local design school. Their talents will pave the way for the next wave of innovation at Grupo M -- collaborative design. Instead of waiting for longtime customers to arrive with sketches for a coming fashion season, Capellán de Lama and her team will visit those customers -- with styles and fabric samples to suggest. A rectangular table at the center of that sample room holds several still-evolving collages that the new-products team hopes to present to its clients soon. Each poster-size collage features a sketch of a model wearing summer clothing, pictures from European fashion magazines, and a set of fabric swatches. The collages seem to imply mood more than mode.