Taylor Togs

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Text and photos by David Icenhour

Introduction

1/03—The 33,000 people in Alexander County put their pants on just like everybody else does. The only difference is they have millions of pairs of pants.

Thanks to a homegrown company, Taylor Togs, the county seat of Taylorsville is the site of the Levi Strauss Company’s largest domestic producer of jeans. In a year’s time, some 1.5 million pairs of jeans pass through one of the world’s most modern jeans finishing plants on their way to retail outlets across the nation and the world.

Incorporated in 1971, Taylor Togs began producing jeans in an old schoolhouse, and their first production line included about 20 people who produced jeans under the “Anvil” brand as well as the Taylor Togs line of jeans. In the past 31 years, owner Grier Lackey, a self-professed “country boy,” has watched the company grow to three facilities with some 400 employees.

Taylor Togs also has production facilities in the North Carolina towns of Micaville and Bakersville. The Taylorsville facility operates under the name Apparel Technologies and is the finishing plant where jeans make their final production stop. Here, jeans are washed and given that all-important worn look, which today’s fashion demands.

In addition to Levi Strauss, the company has produced jeans for Wrangler, Calvin Klein, Vanity Fair, Abercrombie & Fitch, Bob Timberlake, and a long list of other clothing companies. A current line of Levi “Vintage” jeans are produced with a serial number for each pair, and because only 500 pairs are made in two styles, the jeans sell in high fashion stores for between $2,000 and $4,000 a pair. Not bad for a “country boy.”

While it’s impressive that a small company in a small town has grown to see revenues of around $15 million per year, it’s even more impressive that the company is still going strong in an area where apparel manufacturing has largely moved offshore, taking thousands of jobs along for the ride.

“We’ve been very fortunate,” Lackey said as we talked one Saturday morning in his Taylorsville facility. “We have continued to be innovative, and we are the last of a dying breed of U.S.-based clothing manufacturers. We have survived by having the flexibility to take on specialty products, by being able to quickly fill in the gap when there’s a shortage of a product on the retail shelves, and by specializing in style and fashion. Bulk manufacturing is less expensive out of the country, but they can’t offer the service that we can.”