ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602270009
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-18 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: PULASKI
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
Some 274 million socks will be manufactured in the town of Pulaski during 1996.
Renfro Corp., a 75-year-old Mount Airy, N.C., company, opened its first Pulaski plant in 1987. Nine years later, it is the town's largest employer with 1,300 people working in three plants.
Slouchy socks and trouser socks, striped socks and white socks - they are sold across the country in such stores as Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target, J.C. Penney, Sears, Montgomery Ward and Foot Locker.
Local shoppers can buy directly from the company at its 6-year-old Renfro Sock Shop in the Maple Shade Shopping Center.
"We're the second-largest sock producer in the world, and we're the No.1 in ladies' and girls'," said James D. "Doc" Reagan, who has been Renfro's Pulaski manager since 1988.
"I just kind of migrated into socks," said the Burlington, N.C., native, who began his manufacturing career with women's hosiery for Burlington Industries.
Renfro's 1,300 employees make it not only the town's largest employer, but also one of the largest employers in Pulaski County. It ranks behind only Volvo-GM Heavy Truck Corp., Pulaski Furniture Corp. and the county school system.
"In the town limits, we've been the top employer for a long time," Reagan said.
The first five employees hired in 1987 are still with Renfro: production employees Mona Chinault, Barbara Giles, Phyllis Richardson, Sarah Simpkins and personnel manager Jane Farmer.
Employment is to increase by about 450 workers in the next few years, with a planned 105,000-square-foot expansion doubling the size of Renfro's 6-year-old Newbern Road Plant. The plan is to break ground in April and complete it by the end of 1996.
In mid-1993, Renfro leased what had been the L.A. Joe Department Store in a shopping center on Virginia 99 (East Main Street) and converted it into a factory. Its operations will be absorbed by the Newbern Road plant, and Renfro expects to leave the Main Street property at the end of the year.
Reagan manages the company's original plant on Jefferson Street in downtown Pulaski. Sheldon Ousley, who worked for Virginia Maid Hosiery when it had an operation in Pulaski, manages the Main Street and Newbern Road plants.
"It's been a win-win situation," Ousley said, since Renfro moved some operations into Virginia, with the company finding good employees and the area getting a gradually increasing source of jobs.
"Our people are our most important asset," agreed Reagan. "As a matter of fact, we've probably got 100 job openings."
Most of those jobs are for sock toe-seaming operations and heating socks on boards to shape them. Pay for those who board the socks can go as high as $8.90 an hour and seaming to $9, after a six-week training program.
Renfro produced 384 million socks companywide in 1995.
Each week, the company turns out more than 2.7 million pairs of socks in Pulaski alone.
"Competition in socks is real tight. Sometimes, pennies a dozen means whether we get an order or not," Reagan said. The company constantly upgrades its equipment and processes to keep its production costs down.
"We have to come up with ways to produce them for less money," he said. "We're just putting in newer knitting machines and newer packaging machines."
The Jefferson Mills plant alone will install 315 new knitting machines, costing $24,000 each. "We'll get 25 a month until we get them all in," Reagan said. It also has put into operation 27 new seaming machines at $18,000 each.
Cost savings is behind the Newbern Road expansion, too.
"The whole company is fixing itself to where we can knit, seam and finish the product in the same plant," Reagan said, "which will lower our costs as far as transportation and handling, and give us a better product because we can control it."
Renfro has had a "zero defects" program for the past 10 years. It encourages employee participation in management decisions, Reagan said. "We have teams of people that work on problems and how to improve things. We'd rather have 2,900 minds [the company's total number of employees] than four or five."
Once a month, in one of the three Pulaski plants, employees from different departments come together to critique the products, processes and packaging, and discuss ways to do them better.
"We've grown at a very rapid pace over, say, the last 10 years, and I don't foresee any slowdown. We keep increasing our market share. We keep growing, even though last year, in the sock area, the total sales and growth were down," Reagan said.
"Renfro continued to grow, and we do it through sound management and judgment and keeping our equipment upgraded," he said. "And we also do it through our people working with us and continuing to lower our costs."
LENGTH: Long : 111 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ALAN KIM/Staff. 1. Mona Shinault, who works her shift inby CNBthe boxing department, was one of the first five people hired in
1987 when Renfro Corp. opened its first Pulaski plant (ran on
NRV-1). 2. Workers load socks onto a boarding machine (above) before
being shippe out. The boarding machine gives the socks the pressed
shape they have in store packaging. 3. The weaving room (right) at
Renfro holds bolts and bolts of yarn used to make socks. Spools of
yarn are systematically arranged to continuously feed automated
knitting machines. 4. James D. "Doc" Reagan has been Renfro's
Pulaski manager since 1988. "I just kind of migrated into socks,"
said the Burlington, N.C., native. 5. A computerized knitting
machine spits another sock out into a pile. The machines can be
programed to knit most any shape and length sock. 6. The Renfro
plant on East Main Street in Pulaski occupies about 50,000 square
feet in a former department store. The operation will move to a
105,000 square foot facility being completed in Newbern. color. 7. A
sock emerges from a toe-closing machine, ready to be rolled to the
next manufacturing step. 8. Phyllis Richardson was one of 90
employees recognized recently for zero-defect performance. Doughnuts
and coffee were served at a special ceremony. Richardson is one of
Renfro's original employees hired in 1987.