MADE IN AMERICA

“ACO Welcomes Kelsey and Annie Timmerman”

The sign is weird. It’s the first time we’ve seen Annie’s new name.

We’re greeted by a reporter from the local newspaper. Lorraine is excited that we came all the way to Perry, New York, to see where my shorts were made. She doesn’t act like this is a weird thing to be doing at all. She thinks it’s neat. I like Lorraine.

Lorraine describes Perry as such: “I always tell people that the south side of town smells like cookies and the north like manure.”

The cookie smell comes from the Archway factory and the manure smell comes from the surrounding dairy farms. Archway cookies remind me of visiting my grandma Timmerman. I’m not sure if the woman ever baked a single cookie in her life, but she always had a pack of unopened Archway oatmeal cookies and a can of Hawaiian punch at the ready for snack time. The manure reminds me of playing basketball in my buddy Adam’s barn. At times the ball would roll out of the hay mow down to where the cows were. We took turns retrieving the ball. You were unlucky if it landed on a pattie when it was your turn.

Both of us born and raised in rural Ohio, Annie and I can relate to life in Perry. The people are the kind of nice that city slickers don’t know – small-town nice. But like many small towns, Perry has lost jobs to conglomerations, cut backs, and cheaper labor overseas. Champion, who made my shorts, once employed over 850 people in Perry. In 2002, they up and left, a major blow to the town of 7,000.

ACO was born from the ashes of Champion. The company founded by Sam who owns the furniture store on Main Street, started with eleven people working in the factory Champion abandoned. The eleven employees worked in a small lighted corner, leaving tens of thousands of square-feet in darkness.
When Ed the CEO lost his battle with cancer, their future was uncertain. They called Mark, a former Champion manager, who had moved south with the industry.

“That thing about not being able to go home again isn’t true,” Marks tells me. “When I came to visit for the day and saw the same people I worked with in the same office I had worked in…that’s what did it for me. I came back for the people. Definitely, not the weather.”

A year ago ACO employed 30 people. Today, after landing a big contract with Adidas who owns Reebok, ACO has 120 employees and looking for more. They custom make uniforms for half of the NBA teams, 3 NFL teams, and over 70 colleges. During our tour we see a lady sewing Jason Kidd’s name onto his Jersey.

The factory isn’t that different from the factories I’ve seen all over the world, but the work environment is. Employees listen to iPods, they have family photos at their workstations, and they smile at us. This is the biggest difference. At the factories in Asia, I tried not to look at the workers for fear that my tour guide would question my interest in their products and cut the tour short. In Perry, Mark greets each employee by name. In Perry, each employee seems to be an individual piece of something that’s growing, something that’s exciting. In Asia, each worker is a set of hands.

Donna, Maxine, Sue, and many of the other workers at ACO remember my 1992 Dream Team shorts. They tell me about how they were made and what their part in making them was. Many of the employees at ACO worked for Champion. Some of them have 20 to 30 years of experience making apparel, and a few over 40 years.

New sewers start out at $8.50/hour. They make more in one hour than many of the workers I met abroad make in a week.

Lorraine leaves us as we chat with Mark in his office. She has other stories to cover. Apparently a cow gave birth to triplets and a local girl won Grand Champion at the fair. It’s good to know that there are bigger stories in Wyoming County, New York, than newlyweds visiting a factory.

A big thanks to the kind people of Perry. I look forward to writing about their town and ACO. It should be a nice upbeat last chapter, a great way to wrap up my quest, and hopefully, a great way to end a book.

ACO

 
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Kyle says:

It cracks me up that you found people who remember making your 1992 Dream Team shorts. The fact that you received such a greeting just tops it off. Seriously, I was laughing out loud in my office. I’m glad to hear that the trip to Perry was so fruitful.

This has been an extremely amusing, entertaining, and enlightening quest, Kels. I have thoroughly enjoyed following every bit of it. Who knew that there was this great of a story hidden on the tags of our clothes? Good stuff.

Oh, and ps, I am totally going to kick your butt in fantasy football this week.

Later on, man.

Kelsey says:

Thanks Kyle.

I’m afraid the Samurai Jacks don’t have a chance vs. the Gods of War this weekend.

Let your voice be heard!