Marty Finney stepped into what he believed was a bleak job market in Davidson County in June 2004 after his final day with Hekman Furniture Co., another domestic victim of low-cost foreign labor and competition.
"I wasn't sure that manufacturers would ever consider coming to Davidson County because of what has happened to our furniture industry," said Finney, a 23-year furniture veteran.
Finney was one of about 4,100 furniture workers in Davidson to have lost their jobs between January 2000 and December 2005 as manufacturers either hotly pursued lower labor costs offshore or dealt with decreasing demand for their products. The industry represents 59 percent of the 6,100 job cuts in manufacturing in the county during that time, according to the N.C. Employment Security Commission.
But then Finney heard about Xceldyne Technologies, a company that makes high-tech titanium parts for motorsports teams that include NASCAR.
The company has expanded its work force from 40 employees to 103 since moving to Thomasville from California in 2003. It is eligible for up to a combined $266,000 in city and county incentives.
Xceldyne found Finney's hands-on manufacturing skills attractive and hired him in February 2005 to make valve components.
"I was nervous about coming to Xceldyne because I was going to an industry that I knew nothing about," Finney said. "But it's really turned out to be a blessing because I'm working in a cleaner environment, the people are great, and I know I've got a steady paycheck."
County officials and economists say that Davidson's economy and community psyche have turned the corner because of a diverse group of custom manufacturers that recently set up shop or expanded in the county.
Companies recruited to Davidson, such as Xceldyne and Imaflex Inc., a Canadian plastics manufacturer, have generated some of the manufacturing jobs.
Other job growth has come from expanding manufacturers such as Unilin Flooring NC LLC, which makes laminate floors, A.M. Haire Truck Bodies Inc. and Atrium Windows and Doors.
Those manufacturers have fed an economic rebound that has produced a net gain of 1,863 jobs since January 2000. That's despite the loss of 6,933 jobs during that time - of which nearly 90 percent came from the manufacturing sector.
The job losses in Davidson and surrounding counties came from a who's who of Davidson manufacturing - Councill Craftsmen Inc. (376 jobs cut in the county) Duracell Inc. (285 in the county), Kayby Mills (170 in the county), Lexington Home Brands (2,920 overall), Thomasville Furniture Industries Inc. (2,859 overall), Stanley Furniture Co. Inc. (150 in the county) and PPG Industries Inc. (440 in the county).
"There's no doubt that 2002 and 2003 was a gloomy time for Davidson County," said state Sen. Stan Bingham, R-Davidson. "We kept hearing talk about Davidson being attractive to manufacturers outside furniture, but I couldn't see a lot of hope for that happening back then.
"We were buckling down for a long, hard road to recovery, figuring it might take us 10 years to get back to where we were before the furniture layoffs began (in 2000),"he said. "But we're definitely seeing the recovery now."
The common denominator in the business recruitment and expansion is a skilled and trainable work force that Davidson employers have leaned on for many years.
"Those businesses were able to look past the layoffs and see the workers left behind and decide that the skills they had could make a difference for their companies," Finney said.
Many of the salaries offered by the custom manufacturers range from $13 to $18 an hour, which matches or surpasses the wages of many of the furniture jobs that have been eliminated.
"In a sense, the economic challenges the county and its cities have faced with the downsizings and closures in their legacy manufacturing companies have created an excellent climate for business recruitment and the expansion of other existing industries," said Don Kirkman, the president of the Piedmont Triad Partnership. "Those include available labor, available buildings, a measured incentive program and a very aggressive economic-development team that is both strategic and tactical and willing to do what it takes to be successful."
Imaflex has committed to creating 50 jobs and spending $10 million on its Thomasville plant - its first U.S. operation for packaging materials. Imaflex is eligible for incentive packages worth up to $30,000 a year for five years from Davidson and the city of Thomasville.
"We concluded that the Triad region not only had a better-than-average plastics-industry work force, but that, combined with our need to service our ever-expanding Southeast customer base, we really could not choose another location," said Joe Abbandonato, the president and chief executive of Imaflex.
Atrium Windows and Doors has added more than 200 jobs in the past two years, supplanting Lexington and Thomasville as the county's largest private employer with about 1,400 workers. Such an employment transition was considered unthinkable just five years ago.
The economic-development efforts have been "uncanny in targeting and successfully recruiting companies to the county," said Pat Everhart, the director of the Davidson County Job Training and Employment Center. She also cited retraining programs at Davidson County Community College.
"There's no doubt that the manufacturing layoffs took a psychological toll on the county," Everhart said. "Hundreds of manufacturing workers could have thrown their hands up and given up. Instead, hundreds of those workers have sought retraining, GED classes, to become more competitive for a new job. And these manufacturers appreciate the value of hiring a 20- to 30-year veteran who's dependable, trainable and ready to go back to work."
The county's manufacturing base, however, is not out of the woods.
PGT Industries Inc., another windows and doors manufacturer, said in February that it is moving its local operations and nearly 400 employees from Lexington to Salisbury to gain more production space. And county officials are bracing for more furniture layoffs.
Davidson officials and leaders, as well as local economists, credit an aggressive position on incentives by the county commissioners and the Lexington and Thomasville city councils for the overall jobs rebound.
The government bodies have offered a combined $4 million in incentives to 18 companies since January 2000, with all but two of the packages being made since January 2004.
Unilin got the top package - $14 million in local and state incentives - for a commitment to expand its work force from 57 to 387 and to spend $80 million on its Thomasville operations.
The incentives have driven not only job creation but also a combined $351 million in capital investment in the county from 2003 to 2005, compared with just $17.4 million in 2002.
"If we had not started being aggressive when we did, we could have been caught with our britches down economically," said Fred McClure, the commission's chairman. "We knew we had to develop a diversified economy because we could get caught again in 15 years having too many jobs depending on one or two industries."
Sherry Jarrell, an assistant professor of finance and economics at Wake Forest University, said that having a surplus of skilled workers has played to Davidson's business-recruitment advantage.
"It's absolutely something that most businesses considering relocating would recognize," Jarrell said. "These people have proven their dedication, their willingness to work their butts off and their desire not to uproot their families."
Even furniture manufacturing is making a customized comeback.
At least 480 jobs are connected to the reopening of Councill Co. LLC's plant in Denton in 2004, Ploi & Co.'s move from Los Angeles to outside Lexington in early 2005 and Linwood Furniture Inc.'s production of the high-end Bob Timberlake collection at a former Lexington Home Brands plant in Linwood.
Charles Suttle took a job as a value-train production manager at Xceldyne in December after 19 years in the furniture industry.
"I still don't feel comfortable with the county's economy even though it's improved greatly in the last three years," Suttle said. "But it's comforting to know that people who are skilled with their hands can still earn a decent, honest living in manufacturing."
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