Spinning a New Strategy | TIME

The President of Patrick Yarns is a bit of an odd duck these days. While most domestic manufacturers are consumed by cutbacks and layoffs, Gilbert Patrick is looking to add to his North Carolina workforce. “We have been very fortunate to never lay off a single associate due to the economy in 45 years,” says Patrick. Just what economy is he working in?

Patrick’s roots in the North Carolina textile industry stretch back more than a hundred years. In the early 1900s, his grandfather started Kings Mountain Cotton Oil Co., which consisted of a cotton gin, an oil mill, a coal yard and an ice plant–a business for every season. Those industries began to wane in the 1960s, so his father H.L. Patrick bought some used textile equipment and started Patrick Yarns, focusing exclusively on spinning industrial mop yarn.

Fifty years ago, there were 10 family-owned spinning plants in Kings Mountain and hundreds of textile mills across the Carolinas, employing hundreds of thousands of people. You know how that story went. Patrick Yarns is the only family-owned spinning plant still standing in the small mill town, and billion-dollar corporations like Springs and Pillowtex have either moved their manufacturing overseas or vanished. The bigger picture is even worse. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the country lost more than 4 million manufacturing jobs from 2000 to 2008, a number that is likely to rise when the damage from this recession is counted.

While many domestic manufacturers increasingly rely on undocumented workers who earn minimum wage and receive no benefits, Patrick credits his company’s environmentally friendly business practices, above-average pay and good employee benefits for making the firm more, not less, competitive. And he lays most of the blame for the decimated manufacturing industry on an uneven playing field with China. “The [previous] Administration refused to make China play by the rules,” he says. “If China stops the illegal subsidies they’re giving their industries and does something to offset the currency manipulation, we’re good to go.”

Patrick is not looking for government intervention to save his business, however. The company’s manufacturing business model may seem counterintuitive. In a world where the efficiencies of scale have prompted textilemakers to mass-produce a limited line of goods, Patrick Yarns spins a wide range of products for a diverse group of customers. While a maker of industrial conveyor belts requires a sturdy yarn with minimal flexibility, for example, a safety-apparel manufacturer needs yarn that offers protection from cuts and heat. Patrick spins highly abrasion-resistant yarn for military applications, moisture-absorption and -retention yarn for fiber-optic cables and antimicrobial yarn for water filtration.

The broad-reach strategy has worked. When Patrick took over operation of the business in 1993, the company ran a single plant with 50 employees. Today there are 170 employees and two state-of-the-art mills with more than 426,000 sq. ft. (about 40,000 sq m) of manufacturing space operating three shifts, six days a week.

In the company’s oldest mill, located across town from the office, nearly a dozen different products are being made simultaneously. The process is complex, time-consuming and challenging. Nevertheless, manufacturing director Mitch Hensley says this specialized production process is worth the headache and is a big part of why the company has held its own in a tough manufacturing environment. “You cannot make this business work by just spinning commodity yarn, making commodity-type fabrics and competing only on price,” says Hensley. “We take a market and hone it and make the highest-quality [yarn] at the lowest price. We’re constantly trying to find the next new thing.”

When describing exactly what he makes, Patrick cribs from a well-known ad campaign: “We don’t make the products you buy. We make the products you buy better.” Most yarn spinners, says Patrick, “will supply you with a list of yarns and say, ‘Here’s the prices.’ We haven’t tried to be everything to everybody in one market. We focus on partnering with our customers to engineer products and services to keep their product line innovative and profitable. Our approach is, ‘Here are our capabilities. This is our expertise. Where can we be of assistance?'”

This strategy earned the yarnmaker a loyal customer in the protective-glove industry. Although that company’s existing product line met cut-protection specs, low abrasion properties contributed to a short life span. Patrick Yarns developed a fiber that could double the cut protection and increase the abrasion resistance more than 300%. A minimal increase in production cost resulted in a longer-lasting, more malleable product that saved money over time. Patrick also creates earth-friendly products and operates the EarthSpan recycling program, which uses fibers from finished apparel or fabric and incorporates customers’ unwanted textiles and scraps into engineered yarns or products that can then be sold in other markets.

Supplying fibers to so many different markets means the company is not reliant on any one segment for survival. Patrick has made production evolution and new designs the key components of his business model. Patrick Yarns holds nine patents and six trademarks in engineered yarns and those used for filtration. Natural fibers such as cotton and hemp end up in blankets and upholstery. Synthetic yarns have a variety of commercial uses, including in water filtration, as carpet backing and for automotive fan belts. The technical yarns developed from stainless steel, glass or Teflon find their way into fiber-optic cables and bushings used in spacecraft.

“The blanket-yarn market has disappeared, but we’re developing a different yarn that will replace it,” says Patrick. “This is unlike any recession we have experienced in most of our lifetimes, and it’s cutting across virtually all segments of the economy. So we’re doing everything possible to lessen the impact and create new avenues for business.” It’s a lesson that many in the U.S. textile business never learned.

INSIDE Preserving jobs–even if the alternative is losing them–can be demoralizing in certain ways too BARBARA KIVIAT ON SALARY REDUCTIONS

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