Granite Knitwear survives in a niche

GRANITE QUARRY -- A button taped to a message board in the Granite Knitwear lobby urges visitors to "Take off your foreign clothes!"

In a nation that dresses itself in shirts shipped in from Sri Lanka, pants put together in Pakistan, even underwear from Uruguay, heeding the button's message could lead to rampant nudity.

Of course, folks could cover themselves with a T-shirt from Granite Knitwear. A T-shirt assembled in Rowan County. A T-shirt, as the sign outside the company's plant on N.C. 52 proudly proclaims, "Made in the U.S.A."

Mike Jones, whose family owns Granite Knitwear, says companies like his are a dying breed.

The poison that's killing them off, he says, has been spreading through America for a decade. Its name is free trade, the North American Free Trade Agreement, better known by its acronym, NAFTA.

It began a decade ago, Jones says. That, he says, was the beginning of the end "for a whole lot of textile and apparel, and probably manufacturing in general.

"It's just cheaper to manufacture commodity-type items somewhere else,"he said. "The trade agreements just made it that much more possible."

NAFTA and subsequent trade agreements were supposed to be a two-way street, opening up foreign countries to American-made products as well as U.S. capital. But critics say the agreements have been a one-way ticket for jobs to cross borders and oceans as manufacturers seek lower operating costs and fewer regulations on doing business.

According to information released earlier this month by the American Textile Manufacturers Institute, 300,000 U.S. textile and apparel jobs have been lost since January 2001. In July alone, the U.S. lost 9,300 apparel jobs.

And those losses don't even include the 6,500 people put out of work when Kannapolis-based Pillowtex announced its permanent closing July 30.

So how has Granite Knitwear survived? Well it hasn't been easy, Jones says.

The company tried to embrace free trade. It spent $10,000 for a presence at a trade show in Guatemala. Jones says that was the "worst trade show we ever went to."

At another trade show in Germany, representatives from other countries approached Granite Knitwear offering to do its work, Jones says.

"They don't think about this as being a two-way street," he said. "That's a smokescreen."

Meanwhile, Jones says, as big-box retailers like Wal- Mart gobble up cheap imports and feed them to bargain-hungry shoppers, the Rowan company has experienced a "slow eating away" of its business.

"There's still business out there, but the quantity and volume is just massively reduced," he said. "It's just much more difficult to sell."

The company has had to find what Jones calls its "niche of a niche." Granite Knitwear does relatively small orders for such customers as the Boys and Girls Club. The average order size is 12 dozen to 16 dozen.

"You're not going to be able to buy that in China," Jones says. "You're going to have to buy a container load and wait months to get it." But Granite Knitwear can easily supply it.

The company also sells its Cal Cru-labeled T-shirts and other goods at two outlet stores -- at one time, there were four -- and at an online store hosted by eBay. Some of its products are made from CoolMax, a DuPont-made fabric for people with active lifestyles.

And Granite Knitwear even exports -- that's right, exports -- custom orders to several companies in Japan.

"It may surprise a lot of people to know, but U.S.-made goods are held in high esteem there," Jones says. "They put a premium on it."

"As long as we remain in our niche of a niche,"Jones says, "I think we'll be OK."

While doing OK, the company is not flourishing as it once did. Founded in 1968 by Frank and Mary Jones, the family matriarch who still works in the office, Granite Knitwear's business has declined by 10 percent or more annually since the mid-1990s. Where it once sold 5,500 dozen T-shirts each week, the company now sells fewer than half that amount.

Much of the loss has been in commodity-type items that can be mass-produced overseas, like the basic white T-shirt, Jones says. The company has spent about $2 million for automated equipment to produce custom orders.

The decline in business has claimed nearly half the company's 150-person workforce of the early 1990s. A number of offices sit empty, the remaining managers rolling those jobs into their daily work.

About 50 sewers sit at machines in the large production room where once 100 worked. Piles of colorful cloth wait to be fashioned into T-shirts and other items. Idle machines wait to be cannibalized for parts.

A large U.S. flag hangs from the ceiling near tables where every single product made at Granite Knitwear is inspected. It's a matter of pride for the people here that they don't just inspect randomly.

Standing on the production-room floor, Peggy Wagoner, who worked for Granite Knitwear for four years, left for three, then came back for 16 more, yearns for the company's heyday, when it could still afford things like Christmas parties, picnics and health insurance.

"We used to have good benefits," Wagoner says. "We really did."

Granite Knitwear ended its health insurance plan earlier this year. Jones explains that the company simply cannot afford to self-insure, as it had done since 1986. And about 20 private companies declined to even bid on the business.

That left workers to find insurance for themselves, and some to wonder if they should seek another job.

"I like it here," says Sue Driver, who has worked at Granite Knitwear for 17 years. But she has had a hard time finding health insurance and worries what might happen.

"If Ithink about it too much, I might get sick," she says, then adds, "At least we have a job."

Jones says the business climate has made it tougher to get financing, as well. Where once the company could get credit on its name alone, now the owners must sign personal guarantees.

Some small companies without Granite Knitwear's assets haven't been able to do that, and have closed up shop. Jones says he has gotten some of their business, but it's not really the way he hopes to stay afloat.

Company leaders hope that people realize Made In the U.S.A. means jobs, and quality. They hope for more customers like Ilona Acree, of Springboro, Ohio, whose 1996 letter hangs framed on the lobby wall.

In the letter, Acree describes buying a Granite Knitwear-made T-shirt for her 8-year-old son on a 1991 vacation to Hilton Head, S.C. At the time of the writing, the shirt had been passed down to two other boys.

Along with a picture of the pristine-looking shirt, Acree extends accolades for the workmanship behind a "wonderful product."

"This shirt has been worn, soiled, washed and dried many, many times during the past five years," she writes. "I have never had a child's garment hold up so well."

That kind of satisfaction is key to Granite Knitwear's future.

"Hopefully, there is a future," Jones says. "If you're a big-box manufacturer selling to a big-box retailer in this country, you're in trouble. But if you can sell to a smaller market, where quality counts, you can stay in business."

Contact Scott Jenkins at 704-797-4248 or sjenkins@salisburypost.com.