Here are a couple of other nuggets of interest from my research on the Pillowtex story:
Bill Mann of The Motley Fool, who once had a personal tie to Cannon Mills, wrote shortly after Pillowtex’s bankruptcy that “no amount of protectionist legislation can change” the fact that domestic textiles can’t compete with foreign mills. He says “the reality is that U.S. textile businesses have been allowed (emphasis his) to compete and have failed miserably.”
Mann’s conclusion? “The American textile industry is in decline because it is an economically unsustainable business when dependent upon high-cost American labor.”
Mann cites many examples to back up his point, but one company exists that may be an exception to the rule: Springs Industries, which the textile union scared away from a deal with Pillowtex.
Springs is run, interestingly enough, by Crandall Bowles, better known as Mrs. Erskine. All the industry know-it-alls that I interviewed told me the same thing: Springs is a well-run company. Don Hogsett of Home Textiles Today told me, “There is no company in the industry that has been more conservatively managed than Springs over the last several decades.” He called them “not flashy,” but “rock solid.”
Springs, a private company that was once public, is also known to take great pains to maintain its reputation as a good corporate citizen. That may explain why it backed away from Pillowtex once the union squawked. Warren Shoulberg of Home Furnishings News told me Springs “probably would have done the right thing as anybody could have in that situation. That?s just the way they operate.”
Another source closer to Springs, which has only two plants that are unionized (may explain a lot!), told me that the company has a more generous program for its employees than any union-run operation. He said it was part of Springs’s corporate culture.
In the last four years Springs has had only three plant closures, according to the American Textile Manufacturers Institute: A rug facility in Indiana in 2001, and two 19th century-era plants near its headquarters in Fort Mill, S.C. earlier this year, which resulted in the loss of 630 jobs. That is a phenomenal record compared to the rest of the industry during that time. Springs has about 40 manufacturing facilities and employs about 17,000 in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.