The owner of a New Bedford clothing factory says he hopes to put a nick in the U.S. trade deficit in the coming years as the company opens retail outlets in China.

New York-based JA Apparel Corp., owner of New Bedford’s Joseph Abboud Manufacturing Co., will open six stand-alone stores and nine shops within high-end stores in China this fall and a similar number next year. The company predicts that it will be in 100 locations in China by 2012.

“We’ve all heard about how apparel manufacturing is one of so many industries to move in recent years from the U.S. to China,” said Marty Staff, president and chief executive officer of JA Apparel. “This is a huge opportunity to build new relationships and add to our extremely loyal customer base.”

As the U.S. market “began to wither” about 18 months ago, JA Apparel looked at where it could grow its business, he said.

“Our business has come back to Earth a little bit,” Staff said.

The booming Chinese mainland seemed an obvious place. The company already sells clothing elsewhere in the Far East and Asia, including in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines.

“We’re one of the big players in Japan,” Staff said. “[China] seemed to be an obvious place to go. If you can do a good job in three or four cities, you can do well.”

The factory in New Bedford began shipping clothing to China this week, sending 500 suits, 500 sports jackets and 900 pairs of trousers to the country.

The company will see what sells out of the initial inventory and adjust its selection over time, Staff said.

“What we do understand is Chinese businessmen need to dress up. What we don’t know is: do Chinese men want black suits, do they want double-breasted suits?” he said.

The 550 or so workers at the New Bedford factory already are making adjustments to the garments they’re producing for the Chinese market, he noted, making jackets and sleeves shorter and shifting the placement of buttons to accommodate the frames of their intended customers.

The company predicts sales in the “seven-figure” range in China this year, he said.

Staff pegged the company’s overall sales at $300 million.

pgrimald@projo.com