Weaving Magic Unravels in Woolrich, Pa. How Woolrich ceased to be an American manufacturer

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Wed Dec 26, 2018, 04:47 PM - Edit history (6)

I was driving around in northern Pennsylvania decades ago, when I turned off the highway and visited the town of Woolrich, Pennsylvania. The parking lot was full of tour buses. Old folks were swarming the factory outlet store. I picked up a beautiful mountain parka. Woolrich made them for L.L. Bean. The only difference is that the L.L. Bean parkas have the L.L. Bean logo on the button snaps, and the Woolrich parkas do not. There was one spot where the sewing had failed to stay on path where a bit of Velcro had been attached to a pocket flap. I fixed the mistake by hand in no time.

I also have a pair of snowmobile gloves I bought there. They were the warmest gloves I've ever had.

How Woolrich ceased to be an American manufacturer https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-weaving-magic-unraveled-in-woolrich-pa-11545408240 … via @WSJ

Link to tweet

BUSINESS

Weaving Magic Unravels in Woolrich, Pa.

After nearly two centuries, a mill closes and a storied brand ceases to be ‘Made in the U.S.A.’

By Ruth Simon | Photographs by Dave Cole/The Wall Street Journal

https://twitter.com/RSimon18
[e-mail]

Dec. 21, 2018 11:04 a.m. ET

For more than 170 years, employees at the Woolrich woolen mill in Woolrich, Pa., have shut down production between Christmas and New Year’s. This year, the mill will stay closed. ... After decades of losses, the plant whose fabrics went into blankets for Union soldiers, Admiral Byrd’s clothes on his Antarctic expedition and buffalo-plaid flannel shirts now popular with millennials is shutting down for good.

Woolrich won’t cease to exist. In fact, the company says its sales are strong. But it will no longer have any manufacturing in the U.S. And for its workers, so much else is lost. ... “You could see our product everywhere,” said Shawn Bianchi, who worked for Woolrich for nearly four decades. “After 9-11, we made ‘freedom throw blankets.’ Every one of them went through my hands.”

For nearly two centuries, Woolrich was controlled by descendants of founder John Rich, a master wool carder from England. Over the past few years, family members ceded control to the owner of Italy’s W.P. Lavori in Corso, which for years had licensed the Woolrich brand in Europe. This fall, W.P. Lavori’s owner sold her stake to private-equity fund L-GAM Advisers. In the process, the mill’s fate was sealed.
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Houses along Park Avenue in Woolrich, Pa. Some of them are Woolrich homes built in the 1930s for mill workers.
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Over the past decades, a U.S. manufacturing operation with 15 sewing factories, two plants making down for parkas and more than 3,500 workers whittled down to a skeleton crew of about 45 employees at the Pennsylvania mill. Their production accounts for less than 5% of Woolrich sales this year, with the rest made in China, Romania, Vietnam and other countries. ... The antiquated mill hasn’t turned a profit in decades. “The company should have been investing way back to the 1980s,” said Nicholas Brayton, a seventh-generation John Rich descendant and president of what is now the company’s North American subsidiary. “Each generation of the last several has had a hand in this, unfortunately,” he said. “Even I am partly at fault.”
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Blankets made at the mill are sold at the outlet store in Woolrich, Pa., top and above left. A billboard a few miles out of town point drivers to the store.
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“It felt like everybody had a family member that worked at Woolrich.” —Dan Campbell, weaver
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Going forward, Woolrich is opening a new flagship store in Manhattan and will now focus on higher-end clothing—such as $200 flannel shirts and $750 Arctic Parkas under the John Rich & Bros. label—and a new outdoor line in partnership with Goldwin, which specializes in technical wear. ... None of it is made in America.



Inside the mill in Woolrich, Pa.

Write to Ruth Simon at [e-mail]

Appeared in the December 22, 2018, print edition as 'Woolrich’s American Unraveling.'

I just checked. I'm wearing an all-cotton Woolrich sweater right now. According to the label, it's "Assembled & finished in Hong Kong. Knit in China." I got it at a church rummage sale a few years ago.

[elleng]

1. 'Thanks.' The story of much of the NE/New England,

and other parts of the U.S.

Seems no one has figured out how to address this big problem.

[Guppy]

2. This is classic

in the way this was operated by the children. They only took the profits and never reinvested. The exact opposite of Pendleton. Pathetic excuse for business.