Why was NC Textile Connect Created?
The results of the 2006 study indicated that the North Carolina textile complex still consists of over 1,340 establishments that employ over 120,000 people in 90 of North Carolina’s 100 counties. These results may seem quite surprising when the media is constantly producing headlines about another textile manufacturing plant closing. Whereas it cannot be denied that the United States has experienced an unprecedented number of job losses in textile manufacturing over the last decade, what the media has failed to portray is the subsequent growth in management, new product development, design, logistics, research, and manufacturing in emerging niche product markets. Unfortunately many of these opportunities are missed because they are not contained within the traditional ‘manufacturing’ industry codes assigned to represent the textile industries.
