Maufacturing Plant Tour

Thursday June 23rd
Today was a super fun day - packed full of stuff to do! The majority of Perform Group's products are manufactured right here in the United States, actually IN Pennsylvania. The manufacturing plant (PGM) is about 30 minutes from the central location (TC) where I work. There is also an outlet store by PGM that I had been to before, shopping for skating costumes and fabric. The outlet has been there for over 30 years, the building has been there FOREVER and has been owned by Perform Group/Tighe since 1969. This is the original manufacturing facility. Anyway, Sara had arranged for all three interns to take a tour, along with Kristi, one of the assistants who had never been there. The four of us met there at 8am this morning and were taken on a 90 minute tour of the facility. It was incredible to see - we saw everything and were taken right up to all the machines. We basically saw how orders get put in, go through cutting (we got to watch the cutting machines work from about 2 feet away - super neat), assembly - different for Alpha and Curtain Call, appliques, glitz (we saw the machine that makes glitzes - awesome!), trims, all the sewing stations and teams - partially assembled costumes were whizzing around us on overhead racks as we walked through - all the way up to finishing and packing into boxes etc. After everything is packed it goes back to TC and is shipped from there - when I walk in to work every morning I come in through the warehouse and I walk through aisles of costumes/leos. Oh and the laser stone machine - how neat would it be to use that? We mainly got to see Alpha leos being assembled as teams are just starting to place orders for this year's leos. Some Curtain Call stock was being produced, stuff for the new catalog that comes out end of summer!

After our tour, we headed over to the outlet to check that out. I was the only one who had been there before and I love shopping in stores where the primary product is stretchy and sparkly - plus I get an employee discount! We checked out all the stuff and even got to go down in the basement and dig around. I ended up buying some sparkly mystique and a cute leo for my little cousin's birthday - all for $15! Maurya ended up with new foot undeez - super cute ones with pink. :-)

Obviously we were hungry after all that shopping....Kristi lives near the outlet/PGM and said we could follow her on the back roads to an Isaac's that was pretty close to TC and then we'd be about 10 mins away from work. Sounded good right? So we all started following Kristi down the winding roads of Wrightsville. About 10 minutes later, she pulled off to the side with a flat tire! So, all four of us are on the side of the road, watching the trucks fly by (Wrightsville is little hilly roads full of BIG trucks who make up time on the flat ground because they have to take the hills at 10mph with their blinkers on), trying to figure out what to do. We figured we could change the tire but it would probably take a couple hours....plus we all had work clothes on! However, we had ended up in front of this house that was getting its roof repaired (ie: construction guys). Probably the only house for about 10 miles and luckily we had ended up there. They were waving at us, trying to figure out what was going on. We waved back and one of them came down to make sure it wasn't a wreck and changed the tire for us - took him 15 minutes! We thanked him profusely! By the time we got to Isaac's everyone was starving - I ate an entire sandwich and that never happens!

We made it back to work around 1pm - a little later then planned because of the tire but what are you going to do? Jessica showed Ashley and I how to do the paperwork for our leos on the computer. One of the programs we use is from the Dark Ages! I'm positive it's older then me, it might be older then dirt. The screen is black with those green block letters and it reminds me of when everything was MS DOS. That's going to take some getting use to... Paperwork will probably take up my half day tomorrow...depending on how long I have to fight with the computer!