ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 8, 1996 TAG: 9606090016
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: LOW MOOR
SOURCE: JEFF STURGEON STAFF WRITER
THE COMMUNITY VIEWS the factory as diversifying the local economy, said a development official.
Home furnishings maker Bacova Guild Ltd. on Friday let the public see inside its new $8 million factory at Low Moor, a project financed by the company's new owner, textile giant Burlington Industries of Greensboro, N.C.
Bacova has Burlington to thank for more than seven acres of fresh-smelling manufacturing and warehouse space, where workers already are busy printing and boxing small decorative household rugs.
Bacova is developing new rugs and shower curtains from Jacquard fabric made by other Burlington divisions. It is a fabric Bacova's operators had not thought to use until they sold the company last year to Burlington.
Burlington, in turn, is marketing its existing lines of interior decorating goods through Bacova shops and catalogs.
Both companies said Friday they have profited from the other.
"We're sharing a lot of ideas, a lot of technology and a lot of resources," said George W. Henderson III, Burlington's chief executive officer.
Based partly on the strength of that relationship, Bacova is projecting sales of $50 million in the fiscal year that ends in late September, up from $39 million in 1994.
And by 2000, the company is projecting sales of $100 million, which would represent an increase of 12,700 percent from $775,000 in 1981. That's the year Pay Haynes, Bacova's chief executive officer, and Benjamin Johns, its president, bought Bacova.
Employment, now at 500, including 400 at the new Alleghany County plant, is projected to rise to 950 by 2000, the company has said.
One employee who has seen Bacova make the transition to a Burlington division said the new owner has changed little that directly affects employees, other than to provide financing for the new factory.
"It's just an overall great place to work," said Melissa Adkins, an inventory control worker and 31/2-year employee.
However, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 said several Bacova employees contacted the union about the possibility of representation.
Kent Vesser, Bacova's vice president of human resources, and Bryant Haskins, a Burlington spokesman, said neither company is overly concerned about the union activity.
They characterized the activity as the union testing the waters to see if employees want to belong. Vesser and Haskins said Bacova and Burlington-mfk-the companies are striving to treat employees in a way that makes union representation unnecessary.
There are no unions at any Burlington plants.
The community views the new factory as diversifying the local economy, which for a century has been based on paper manufacturing, said J. Glynn Loope, executive director of the Alleghany Highlands Regional Economic Development Authority.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: CINDY PINKSTON/Staff. Janice Anderson sews the edges ofby CNBa rug while visitors tour the new Bacova Guild Ltd. facility in Low
Moor during an open house Friday.