Company finds niche repairing flawed clothes made overseas

Jeff Glassman, president of Darn It Inc., reinvented his father’s business.

For nearly three decades, Jeff Glassman’s family-owned manufacturing business, Ronnie Manufacturing Co., found success making women’s sportswear for a large spectrum of retailers, from JCPenney to Nordstrom.

But after the New Bedford company’s heyday in the ‘70s and ‘80‘s, lucrative clothing contracts began to drift offshore where cheaper labor could be found. The company floundered, and eventually closed in 1995.

“My customers, instead of coming to me, started going elsewhere — to Costa Rica, Mexico and Honduras,” said Glassman, 40. “We were paying people between $10 and $14 an hour and they were getting the same garment for 40 cents an hour.”