Marena in the spotlight

Making it fit
Advances have been made in tools designed to help shoppers get the right fit in garments they buy online. Software from Israel-based OptiTex International, for example, allows online shoppers to see a three-dimensional rendering of a figure with their body type wearing the garment they have chosen.

Marena Group Inc., a medical-supplies company based in Lawrenceville, Ga., started using the OptiTex software four years ago and is planning to roll out the latest 3D technology on their website in the coming months. Marena is a leading provider of snug-fitting medical garments worn after plastic surgery. These garments are worn continuously for 24 hours after the surgery in order to maintain the fixes, then off and on for another two to eight weeks. Getting a good fit is critical to the success of the operation.

To enable its customers to custom-fit garments, Marena uses software from Webcom Inc., of Milwaukee. Webcom's tool is a "configurator," which asks for details like height, weight, what area of the body needs covering and how snug-fitting the garment should be. The OptiTex tool will work in conjunction with the Webcom software, allowing customers to see the fit of a garment before they buy it.

The Webcom software alone has given Marena a big boost. Alex Knezevic, Marena's director of technology, attributes 15% of the company's growth last year to the fitting technology. "We've invested in technology to make it possible [for customers] to give us their measurements," he says, "and we can fit them every time." read more...

The Little Book of Lipo

Our good friend, Carol Martin is a nationally recognized expert and consultant on cosmetic surgery, who has appeared on CNN, ET, The Insider, Discovery and other shows to offer tips and insider secrets to safe surgery. Carol recently published “The Little Book of Lipo,” a true insider’s guide to the most popular surgery in the country: liposuction, its pros, cons, and how to prepare, get the most out of it, and recover safely and fast. Not only does Carol give you the power to analyze whether to lipo or not to lipo, she offers a step-by-step consumer’s guide on how to choose a top surgeon, from checking credentials to a list of questions to ask, how to prepare your house, friends, family, overcome any fears, the right diet and danger signs to look for while healing—everything you need to know but didn’t know to ask. “You can trust what you learn from this book. There is no agenda here except to educate the consumer,” says Dr. Vince Zubowicz, a top Atlanta plastic surgeon who wrote the forward. “You won’t find this kind of unbiased information in the yellow pages or a website.”

The book is available for sale now on Amazon.com and other fine stores.

Marena, A walk in Miracles...
The Marena Group has achieved that kind of customer satisfaction and company-wide success by doing something the lending community said couldn't be done - manufacturing garments in the United States rather than overseas. The Watkinses see both a moral and a financial imperative for the policy.

"We always felt that we have an obligation to put local people to work rather than someone overseas," Mrs. Watkins says. "We like to know that we are helping people where we live - not just taking care of ourselves by making more profit."

From a dollars-and-cents perspective, Mr. Watkins contends that "if today's apparel manufacturers would look at the total (unit plus system) cost of making their products overseas, then in many cases our model might be at least the same price. So, if we achieve the same price and we could be faster to the customers with less capital tied up in inventory, wouldn't that be better?"

The 60 employees working in The Marena Group's brightly-lit manufacturing area and offices would certainly answer in the affirmative. read more...

Optitex and Marena, a success story
Marena Group Wins Apparel Magazine’s All Star Award

NEW YORK & ATLANTA, Georgia, January 18, 2007 – Israeli based OptiTex LTD, a leading provider of software for the textile and fashion industry, and The Marena Group of Lawrenceville GA, are pleased to announce that Marena has won the prestigious Grand All Star Award 2006/7 presented by Apparel Magazine at the magazine’s Tech Conference 2006 which was recently held at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York City.

Over ten companies were nominated for the All Star award, which was presented to The Marena Group for demonstrating excellence in performance against all the criteria which are: (1) Innovation; (2) Excellence in Management; (3) A Strong Track Record of Growth; and (4) Corporate Goodwill that Reflects Positively on the Industry. read more...

Open Source Suits Marena
(SYS-CON Media) - The Marena Group in Lawrenceville, Georgia, has always followed its own path and bucked convention. A maker of compression garments for athletic and post-surgical use, the company exports approximately half of its domestically produced goods to overseas markets - a true exception in the garment field. The company has also followed its own instincts in the area of information technology and has readily embraced open source products. read more...

Marena wins Apparel Magazine’s 2006/7 All Star award
When you enter The Marena Group’s headquarters, it takes a little while to realize you are in a very different sort of corporation.
At first glance, the firm’s Lawrenceville, GA, operation looks much like many of the other modern facilities situated in the newer office parks of the Greater Atlanta area’s burgeoning suburbs — lots of windows, a sparkling foyer, a stately conference table and a view to neat rows of cubicles nearby.

But before long, the subtle and not-so-subtle things that make Marena one-of-a-kind begin to show themselves.
You discover that one of the company’s founders, COO William BC “Bill” Watkins, works from a cubicle situated right amid those of Marena’s other key managers. The firm’s customer service leaders are just across from him; the chief technology officer a few arms’ lengths away. There is little barrier between them as their cubicle “walls” are of the low-slung variety. read more...

Medical Q & A
Mark Lazarus, president of Laztech Consultants, a company that provides support in the product development of innovative knitted fabrics for the medical market, answers FabricLink's Q&A on Medical Textiles.

Q The medical area has experienced significant growth recently. What do you see as the biggest growth area within the medical market?

A As you know, there are multiple market segments within the medical market. The two fastest growing segments are:
1. Post surgical compression garments
2. Sports medicine braces and devices

The post surgical compression garment growth has been fueled by the TV phenomenon of "extreme makeover", and the resulting boom in plastic surgery. Also, through the education and marketing efforts of the medical garment companies, doctors are now more aware of the benefits of compression in the healing of the skin and muscles. read more...

Marena Group: All Star Lean manufacturer
This month's issue of Apparel (free sub) features the industry All-Stars, an industry wide competition of the trade's best and brightest. In the past, this has usually also meant the biggest but this year is the exception (one can only hope the trend will continue). The winner of this year's All Stars is the Marena Group, a lean domestic manufacturer from Lawrenceville GA.

This award is pivotal for several reasons. First, this company is tiny; maybe about fifty people and as we all know, the apparel industry typically ignores small players. More importantly though, the company is a lean manufacturer. And by lean, I mean real lean, not the co-opted or perverted definition of lean manufacturing that's been adopted by players menacingly waving big sticks at their overseas producers to get them to move faster. Everything is produced at their location in GA. read more...

Open source integration tool makes custom apps play nice - Monday
Alex Knezevic's IT shop at the Marena Group Inc. was awash in a mix of proprietary, open source and custom applications, and none of them were talking to each other. One year ago, the Lawrenceville, Ga., medical garments manufacturer was stocked with Intel-based servers and desktops that ran Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. And its staff of 60 had a mix of specialized manufacturing software to push more than 200,000 custom post-surgical compression garments out the door every year. read more...

The Marena Group Earns Prestigious Award
Thanks to worldwide clientele, science-based products, same-day order turnaround, and a commitment to helping people, The Marena Group, Inc., has earned Apparel magazine’s 2006 Grand All-Star Award for outstanding apparel business.

Out of the tens of thousands of companies in the apparel industry, only ten were nominated for this year’s Grand All-Star Award. Winners were selected by Apparel magazine’s editorial staff based on nominations from within the industry, All-Star Award partner associates, and others. Award criteria include innovation, management excellence, a strong record of growth, and corporate goodwill. read more...

Rapid Response Systems and Technologies for the Apparel and Textile Industries
In the past ten years the United States demand for apparel has increased by approximately 60% while the job lost in the apparel and textile industries has been 873,100 or 56% of the workforce.

With Georgia's textile, carpet and consumer products industry being the state's largest manufacturing employer, providing jobs to over 106,000 citizens with sales of over $26 billion, efforts need to be made to keep a competitive advantage.

The ability to significantly reduce the order processing size and handle smaller processing unit sizes without disruption and chaos to the manufacturing functions has been a major issue for the textile and apparel industries for many years. Technologies and systems may have been available but the selection, evaluation and impletion of these concepts, practices and technologies to fit the various needs of the vast array of apparel and textile products have not been so easily done. read more...

Case Study: The Marena Group
In an industry known for slavish attention to fashion and passing trends, The Marena Group has made its bet on a classic: American manufacturing. This Lawrenceville, Georgia maker of compression garments for athletic and post-surgical use has found that by embracing cutting-edge technology, it can produce garments domestically at a cost that competes favorably with offshore alternatives. In fact, the company exports roughly half its domestically-made goods to overseas markets — a true exception in the garment field. read more...