Posted April 21, 2014

 

Al Thomas III calls this period in textile history “a renaissance.” So it may not be far-fetched to call him a “Renaissance Man.”

 

Or any other U.S. textile industry industrialist who has made it through the turbulent times and is still standing to fight another day.

 

While many had written off this industry after our government pawned off much of it over the last 25 years, there are survivors. Many more than the general populace knows. Those who refused to quit, those who learned to diversify, those who created business when prospects were thin.

 

Even as many of their brethren were falling by the wayside.

 

Thomas, president of Frankl & Thomas, Inc. of Greenville, S.C., is one of those survivors. When textiles is that deep in your blood, there’s no quit in you. His bio on the company website says he “was born with a textile spindle in his hand.” And it’s easy to see why. In the company’s lobby is an old group photo of employees of Scranton Silk Machine Co. of Scranton, Pa. One of those employees is his grandfather, who began a long career in the industry in 1906.

 

Thomas’ father, Al Thomas II, continued that family legacy by enrolling in the textile engineering program at N.C. State University. As a rising junior, he was sent to Greenville, S.C. by his father to install machinery that processes nylon in 1938 just before Dupont commercialized the fiber. Later, Al Thomas III was born in that city, considered the heart of the U.S. textile industry.

 

By 16, he was working at a textile mill in Scranton, where he began in the twisting department and worked in every area of yarn preparation.

 

In 1971, Thomas founded Thomas Textile Machinery, Inc., a sales agency. He quickly signed Nippon Nozzle to sell spinnerets in the U.S. and continues that relationship today. Through the years, he has continually evolved his business and, through a merger and several acquisitions, Frankl & Thomas, Inc. remains a top player in its field as a representative for numerous key companies in various sectors of the industry.

 

Most recently, the company acquired Feil & Davidson of Greensboro, N.C., greatly expanding its product line in the ring spinning arena. (Read story here.)

 

It’s deals like these that have helped the company stay viable for 43 years under Thomas’ leadership. And Thomas, 72, says he has no intention of throwing in the towel and joining the world of retirement. He calls these exciting times, with new yarn processing plants being built and others expanding, and he wants to be a part of this resurgence as long as possible.

 

That kind of excitement for an industry is what has made survivors out of Thomas and many others in the face of dire straits.

 

Leonardo da Vinci, a true Renaissance Man, perhaps summed up their philosophy when he said: “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things."