Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 11, 1992 TAG: 9202110035
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE: MARTINSVILLE LENGTH: Medium
FLEECEWEAR MAKERS SEE RECOVERY
The region's major fleecewear makers, having sweated the recession's impacts, now say they're seeing signs of economic recovery.Bassett-Walker Inc. said it will hire more than 700 employees this year to meet a rising demand for its Lee brand of sweatshirts, T-shirts and jerseys.
The Ferrum plant, closed last year, will be reopened. About half of the hiring will be at Ferrum, Bassett and Chatham in Virginia and the remainder will be at Kinston, N.C. The company's work force will be expanded by 12.7 percent.
"We hope the recession is behind us," Carl Reynolds, a vice president, said Monday. Bassett-Walker is a subsidiary of VF Corp. of Wyomissing, Pa., the world's largest publicly owned apparel company.
The decision to start recalling laid-off workers as well as hiring new employees "was based on our current order position and the way we expect orders to come in the rest of the year," Reynolds said Monday. In its expansion, the company said it will open three plants this year.
Bassett-Walker sells its Lee-brand casual clothing to large retailers such as J.C. Penney Co. and Dayton Hudson Corp.'s Target and Mervyn's chains, as well as to wholesalers who sell to screen printers.
Signs of growth, but no major hiring, came from Tultex and Sara Lee Corp., national sweatsuit competitors and Martinsville neighbors of Bassett-Walker.
Tultex reported a 47 percent increase in its backlog of unfilled orders at the end of 1991. And its fleecewear sales "have been considerably up in the last six months," said chairman John Franck.
Retail purchases of Tultex products have been increasing 7 percent to 9 percent a month, he said. Retailers are ordering as they need to replace their inventories, Franck said.
Tultex's best sales come in the last half of the year, he added.
Sara Lee's plants have some overtime work, in contrast to short work-weeks in late 1990. "Our business is very strong," said Nancy Young, company spokeswoman in Winston-Salem, N.C. Sales started to turn around in late fall, she said.
By May, the company said it expects to have more than 150 employees at the reopened Ferrum plant, an additional 75 at Bassett and more than 125 at a second sewing plant at Chatham. About 350 people will be added at Kinston, by September.
The company will provide training for new employees who lack experience in apparel manufacturing, Reynolds said. He does not expect any difficulty in finding people for the new job slots.
The hiring is welcome news in the Martinsville area, where the unemployment rate was 6.5 percent in December, the latest available figure. In Franklin County, the December jobless rate was 6.7 percent of the work force.
Bill Horne, Bassett-Walker's president, said his company's hiring plans are "the result of three years of hard work by all our people to reposition our business and create the kind of growth potential we knew was there for our Lee-brand garments."