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STA Summer Marketing Forum: Part 1
Made in America: Music to attendees' ears
Posted August 17, 2016
By Devin Steele (DSteele@eTextileCommunications.com)
BELMONT, N.C. – Textile representatives hungry to learn and network with colleagues during a period of industry reinvention/reascension turned out en masse for the Southern Textile Association’s (STA’s) 12th annual Summer Marketing Forum here last week.
The official theme was “Building Successful Businesses Through Partnerships.” But it didn’t take long for the nearly 150 attendees – the most on hand for this event in a number of years – to grasp an underlying, common thread throughout the day: “Made in America.”
Held at Gaston College’s Textile Technology Center-Kimbrell Campus, the forum featured three representatives of textile/apparel manufacturing companies – all of whose businesses are committed to U.S. production. In addition, an executive from a leading apparel/athletic brand spoke of his company’s efforts in escalating the re-shoring effort. Rounding out the docket were two speakers touting the importance of American textiles.
Jim Booterbaugh, who has moderated this event since its inception, spoke of the growth of the STA and how it has evolved in its 108-year existence to meet the needs of membership.
“I was president of STA eight years ago,” said Booterbaugh, president of National Spinning Co. “At that point in time, we were strategizing on how to get membership over 400 – and now we’ve crossed the 500 mark. So there has been tremendous growth in membership of STA, and that’s a testament to how great the networking and educational opportunities are in this organization. There’s a tremendous value here for a small amount of dues for being a member.
“There are plenty of mills today that are still thriving and making value-added products that weren’t even dreamed of 50 years ago,” he continued. “In a similar way, STA has evolved. When STA was established 108 years ago, the focus was on networking – as it is now – along with technical seminars. Today, with plants being more specialized, the educational focus has evolved more to business and market-related education and topics. Hence, this conference was established 12 years ago to address market-related issues that are important to the industry. This conference was really the first step that STA made to get away from the technical side and into the marketing side. And each year, we’ve tried to raise the bar, and we have raised the bar.”
In this, Part 1 of our review, we focus on a presentation from the head of North Carolina-based sock maker Nester Hosiery.
Nester Hosiery: Telling the American-made story
Kelly Nester, president & CEO of Nester Hosiery, Mt. Airy, N.C., discussed his company’s made-in-America strategy, which includes telling that story through its unique Farm to Feet™ independent brand. According to Nester, Farm to Feet™ is committed to the single, simple goal of creating “the world’s best wool socks” by exclusively using an all-American recipe: U.S. materials, U.S. manufacturing and U.S. labor.
Nester Hosiery designs and manufactures socks for mountaineers, firefighters, military, athletes and “anyone who loves a perfect pair of socks,” he said. According to Nester, the company operates a sophisticated design center, which uses to latest and most advanced machinery and equipment, provides market-leading product design and development and employs proprietary software for complete enterprise management. The company employs 205 people.
Since joining his Uncle Marty Nester’s company in 1996, Kelly Nester has played a leadership role throughout much of its 23-year history. He spoke of the company’s evolving mission and focus as the industry transformed over the past two decades. In 1996, its mission was to “not run out of money,” with a secondary mission being to “embrace innovation,” he said.
It did so by continuing to invest in new technologies and equipment as it developed partnerships with premier outdoor brands and incorporating performance synthetics into its products.
The company continued to evolve and, in 2001, switched its focus to “finding the best solution to plan and service our customers,” Nester said, because the company “didn’t have a good solution to taking care of large customers.” So Nester Hosiery began a long-term partnership with software development company Mobile Foundry, enabling Nester Hosiery to build a custom Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, SockInfo™, that provides total visibility into supply, demand and production operations. Order processing, shipping, inventory management and sales forecasting tools and reports were all implemented, he said.
“We’ve taken this software to our labor force, and they’re very involved in this,” he said.
Then, 2005 hit – “the worst year I can remember,” for the company, Nester said, and it was forced to change its focus to a “narrow and deep philosophy.”
“We couldn’t deliver on what we had promised,” he said. “It was a year of negative energy. That was the first realization for me of how important the supply chain story is.”
After much thought, Nester then presented a brand concept to the team: Let’s tell the company’s U.S. manufacturing story, he pitched. The team mulled the idea and decided not to try it initially, until Marty Nester later said: “I think we should do this.”
Farm to Feet™ was borne out of this idea. So in 2010, Nester Hosiery hired a photographer to come in and capture images that tell that story. After developing relationships with suppliers such as Chargeurs, Burlington and the American Sheep Industry Association and creating concepts for the campaign and brand, Farm to Feet™ was launched in 2013.
Farm to Feet™ champions the story of the American worker and the American supply chain on its packaging and website, he said. It takes the idea of supply cycle visibility to a new level, featuring a 100 percent American-made product: from the merino wool, to the processing, to the knitting and even the packaging and displays, all materials and manufacturing is to originate from the United States. Its sock packaging includes photos and stories of Nester employees and people within its supply chain.
The brand’s current line includes hike, multi-sport, hunt/fish, everyday, snow sports, tactical and equestrian socks. These collections include men’s and women’s styles in multiple colorways and heights.
All Farm to Feet™ styles are named after communities that are connected to the brand due to a supplier, retailer, non-profit, sales team or other community partnerships, he said.
“If I were going to rewrite it our focus in 2016, I would say we should include: innovate; improve our process; narrow and deep; tell all of our product stories; and grow U.S. manufacturing,” Nester said.