Is dyersburg fabric still operating?
No. Dyersburg Fabrics ceased operations in July 2001. Dyersburg
Corporation filed for bankruptcy protection in 2000 and was hoping
to come out from under Chapter 11 in 2001. The Corporation acquired
Alamac Knits from Westpoint Stevens in 1997 at a cost of $125
million. At the time Dyersburg Corporation had opened corporate
offices in 1998 in Charlotte, N.C. and therefore Dyersburg
Corporation operated in N.C. not in Tennessee as many would
believe. The acquisition of ALamac was the first nail in the coffin
for Dyersburg Fabrics. They went into the game with a 60-65% debt
ratio. In 1997/98 Dyersburg Fabrics was launching their Technical
Performance fabrics product line that not only encompassed
Dyersburg but also included certain products from the United
Knitting Line. Mr. Keith Pitts was Director of Research of
Development at Dyersburg and was instrumental in making this
product line a reality for the Winter Outdoor Retailer Show in Salt
Lake City where Dyersburg launched their new line. During 1998 and
1999 Dyersburg found itself floundering in marketing and
merchandising as the "Corporation" directed $$$ for such from the
Dyersburg Fabrics lineup to repositioning Alamac Knits into a
performance based uniform fabric supplier. Presidio(TM) was
launched in which pique fabrics were treated with stain-release and
later on Moisture management. During the meantime, Dyersburg was
developing nearly 80 fabrics a month going unnoticed as the
merchandising and marketing crew were primarily Alamac personnel
and they knew nothing about the performance fabric market. Another
nail in the coffin. In early 2000, Patagonia dropped Dyersburg as
supplier of their 7.5 oz ECO fleece to direct all business to
Malden Mills due to quality problems coming from the Dyersburg
facility. Dyersburg was the company that originally partnered with
Wellman Industries in 1993 to develop a fabric in cooperation with
Patagonia that was at least 55% recycled PET bottles. Dyersburg
corrected their issues but it was too late and when they filed
Chapter 11 Patagonia did not want to give business back to a
potential company that might fold. Also, Mountain Equipment Co-op
was purchasing fabric and found itself doing the same as Patagonia.
Mr. Tim Hopkins was asked to move into Development and Mr. Lee
Lunsford, VP-Operations at Dyersburg decided to place Joe Jenkins,
whom he hired to run the Open end spinning operation and Trenton
Mills into the finishing room of which he knew ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
ABOUT. Quality issues arose and as I stated earlier Patagonia
ditched the guy that took them to the dance. It was found that Mr.
Jenkins had stolen proprietary designs with regard to the meat bag
industry from Dyersburg and he and his brother had started their
own company on the side competing against Trenton Mills. Dyersburg
did not prosecute that I know of but released Mr. Jenkins from his
responsibilities and return of equipment,etc. In my opinion, Gene
McBride should have released Mr. Lunsford at that time for such a
blunder as well. Mr. Lunsford was known for many at the plant and
pissed quite a few of the born and raised DFI staff off. The good
thing about this story is that Mr. Hopkins was allowed to return to
the Finishing room to do his job as Technical Manager over the
Outerwear fleece . Dyersburg though was doing a good business with
Columbia sportswear where they were producing the Polartec 200
fabric under their style 0139 and Columbia was able to lay down on
cutting table at their Chaffee, MO. plant side by side with
Maldens. Dyersburg then went into a JV with Grupo M in the
Dominican Republic where they were producing fleece garments at
plant in their "free Zone" park for Columbia, Port Authority,
Timberland,etc. and the Chaffee plant of Columbia Sportswear
shutdown. In early 2001 , The Gap came into the Dyersburg plants to
tour and talk about business for The Gap and Old Navy where
production of fleece would be 200,000 yards/week. Major business
that could sustain the plant. Mr. Pitts and the development group
tried developing some low cost fleece fabrics per the specs of Old
Navy and Gap but found for the $$$/yard price they offered to pay
DFI could not compete. It turned out that the GAP could get fabric
from China landed in Mexico and pay the duty/tariff and still come
out cheaper per garment than Dyersburg could produce the fabric and
ship to Mexico or the Domincan Republic duty free mind you and ship
garments back to U.S. This is when Dyersburg knew the writing was
on the wall. Textiles as the U.S. had known it ....was to be
history. During April, May and June of 2001 Dyersburg was
feverishly trying to move production equipment out of the Alamac
plants and into the Dyersburg facility. The banks were allowing
this to happen at Dyersburg. When Dyersburg Corporation went to
seek more capital to complete the project and shut the N.C. plants
down.....they were told NO. Guess what AlamacUSA as it is known now
is still operating. United Knitting in CLeveland was sold off to
Mallen Industries where Jerry Miller is President and coowner. Mark
Cabral and his crew are running Alamad today. The plan was to run
all product lines out of the DYersburg plant since it was the
"mothership" but the kicker was having corporate offices in my
opinion in Charlotte and N.C. plants were favored over TN.
Dyersburg would still be operating today doing much like Malden
Mills, now Polartec Industries after 2 Chapter 11 bankruptcies and
support from Senator Ted Kennedy and John Kerry in Massachusetts to
give them government contracts. Polartec operates plants in China
today as well. Dyersburg plant was bought by a private LLC that
tried to get business started again. Trouble with that is you have
lost your customer base that the company once had and the personnel
that tried to do this were not the ones that could make it happen.
The Director of Research and Development , whom was Mr. Pitts had
taken another job in Dyersburg at an automotive firm, Mr. Miller
was running his own company, Gene McBride had went to work as Sr.
VP at Sara Lee, Mr. Lee Lunsford went to work for another company,
Mr. David Tinkle and Mr. James Houston had taken other jobs in the
area as well. The gentlemen that bought the facility were farmers
and local shyster businessmen with one lone wolf being Bill Wiggins
who had swindled hundreds of thousands of dollars out of Dyersburg
while it was running in the late 90's with Q.A. monitoring
equipment that was not utilized in the knitting plant.
