Industrywide importing association seeks members
By Brian Carroll -- Furniture Today, February 3, 2002
GREENSBORO, N.C. — A veteran customs broker is seeking to lower the furniture industry's importing costs by organizing manufacturers and retailers into the International Furniture Products Shippers Assn.
Chartered last week, the IFPSA is a nonprofit industry association designed to create better leverage in negotiations with shippers and freight companies by combining buying power, according to its founder, Jim Garst.
Garst also is president of AGL, a customs brokerage dealing with air and ocean freight forwarders and shippers. He also is in talks with the American Furniture Manufacturers Assn. about perhaps working jointly on better organizing the industry vis-à-vis offshore sourcing.
"Our research tells us that with manufacturers and retailers in the Southeast alone, there is between $6 million and $8 million to be saved (per year) with just moderate participation" in the new association, said Garst, whose firm is based in Greensboro.
He said he is talking to industry members to assemble a board of directors and officers of the new IFPSA, of which he is executive director. A letter of invitation went out last week to 200 mostly midsized producers and retailers, inviting them to become sponsors.
He is targeting both furniture and accessories manufacturers and retailers and hopes to have 50 association members by midsummer.
"We are trying to beat the (April) deadline for new shipping contracts," Garst said. "We expect vessel operators to levy increases, so we want to organize as many companies as we can in anticipation" of the next round of contract talks.
Garst said the association is aimed at midsized companies because since 1998 and the passage of the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, "not all shippers are able to access preferred rates. OSRA openly discriminates in favor of large shippers, leaving all others to freight forwarders and shippers' associations."
In addition to negotiating for importers, working to consolidate shipments to lower costs, and gathering and providing intelligence on freight pricing, the IFPSA hopes to reduce members' related operating costs, standardize shipping practices, and reduce shipping liability.
IFPSA is using its Web site at www.ifpsa.net to let any company find out whether the association might meet or exceed the company's current shipping rates and methods.
"If the association can save you money, you might want to sign up," Garst said. "I anticipate companies recouping those membership costs with as few as three containers."
Rates will be kept confidential, he said, as the law requires.
Garst is a licensed customs broker, former air and ocean freight forwarder, and former president of American Overseas Transport Corp.
| Garst |
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