ORWIGSBURG - A longtime garment company will be ending the way it started.
Walter Meck, president/CEO of FesslerUSA, said Monday the company that started as Meck & Co. in 1900 making underwear, eventually switching to tees and tops and once again making high-end men's underwear starting a couple months ago, is finishing up its last orders and will be closed by the end of next week.
FesslerUSA has provided design services and manufactured knit fabric and apparel and consumer products.
Until recently, it employed 130 people, including office staff, sales employees, knitters, sewers and operators, but is now operating with a "skeleton crew" while the other workers have been either laid off or found other jobs.
While finishing its last orders, the company is being liquidated with all of the machinery being dismantled and sold.
"I think the hardest part is how do you take apart something that took 100 years to build," third-generation owner Meck said. "It happened fast. We were doing well probably until about June."
All of the equipment is expected to be gone from the facility by Jan. 1, 2013. The equipment will go to a broker and most of it will not remain in the U.S.
"I was shocked at how quickly people came out of the woodwork to buy our equipment," Meck said. "There's a good demand in Central and South American right now and that would probably be the leading candidate. The company that bought them will use some of them in the USA but not all of them."
Meck said that while the retail market didn't collapse, it dramatically cut down all around the country, not just for FesslerUSA.
"Then the banks started pressuring us and as soon as they started doing that, customers started saying, 'Maybe I should get my orders done somewhere else until you get everything back in good financial condition,' " Meck said. "We started to lose more customers in addition to the already down market."
He said he could not find support from a government agency - federal, state or local - for small businesses.
The company sought help from banks and local representatives, including U.S. Rep. Tim Holden, D-17, and state Sen. David Argall, R-29, which Meck said he appreciated, but in the end, there was a lack of programs dedicated to keeping small businesses alive.
Meck said that what ended the company's nearly 113-year run was weak consumer spending, competition from China and the Far East, tighter credit standards that prevented Fessler from getting a desperately needed loan and a lack of interest from private investors and potential buyers.
While recent problems proved too much for the company, in the past it survived war and depression, including World War I and II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and free trade and foreign imports.
"We did well during both World War I and II and we actually had military contracts," Meck said. "We were one of the first people in the world to make men's underwear shirts with sleeves. Our soldiers were cold in Europe in World War I."
Meck's father sold the business to the Fessler family in 1960. Meck later joined other family members to buy the company back in 1994.
While the company used to sell to large department stores such as Sears and JC Penny, Meck said that after the North American Free Trade Agreement came long, department stores started buying from overseas.
FesslerUSA then had to reinvent itself about 2008, getting into higher fashion and producing "better fabrics."
Recently, FesslerUSA started to expand into new markets, including forming a partnership with two southern Michigan entrepreneurs, Bob and Debbie Rutan, who created RemZzzs CPAP Mask Liners, a cotton liner that works with any CPAP or continuous positive airway pressure machine that is used to treat sleep apnea. They also joined with New York City entrepreneur Jake Bronstein to create an American-made premium men's underwear brand called Flint and Tinder.
"From a personal standpoint, it's disappointing," Bronstein said by email Monday. "For months, the Flint and Tinder team has worked side-by-side with the staff at Fessler. We made a high-quality product domestically in a category no one had attempted in a very long time. We shipped our first giant order, it took more hard work and determination than most people would realize, and we made many good friends along the way."
Bronstein said that from a business point of view, the situation was likely unavoidable, as FesslerUSA had financial problems prior to his brand showing up.
"The good news is, our starting this project together helped to keep more than 100 people employed for a number of months," he said. "It also proved what we are capable of, something that's made the process of recruiting new partners much easier."
Although Flint and Tinder began with just the one factory, today it is a network spanning facilities in several states.
With the FesslerUSA closing soon, Meck said the thing that pains him the most is that 130 employees will be losing their jobs.
In 2011, the employees produced more than 1 million garments and up until June, sales were 15 percent higher than last year.
At its peak, the company had 260 employees in 2008 and for the 10 years prior to 2008, averaged more than 200 customers a year and produced about 4 million garments a year.
Sue Ermert, Schuylkill Haven, sewing supervisor at FesslerUSA and an employee for 12 years, said this is her eighth closing in all the years that she has worked.
"I went through seven sewing factories and one medical plant in all the places I've worked, so this is nothing new for me," she said. "What hurts is that you get to know a lot of the people that you work with, you make friendships and you've just got to start all over again."
Ermert said that once finished at the company, she doesn't think she will be looking for another job, as she is only a year from retirement, but she feels sorry for the younger employees since "it will be hard for them to find another job, especially in the sewing industry."
Sewer Gail Harvey, New Ringold, said that she has been at the company for 45 years and it's the only place she's ever worked. She will now most likely be looking for a part-time job.
"It's been a good company to work for all the years that I've been here," she said. "I never thought I'd be here when it closed."
Lisa Ditzler, McKeansburg, an employee for eight years working in quality and data entry, said that in addition to the friendships she developed at the company, she'll also miss the freedom the company offered and the vacation time.
"It's sad," she said. "None of us thought we would be doing it all over again, since a lot of us came from different places that closed. There's nothing out there."
Ditzler said she enjoyed working there since if anyone ever had a family problem, the company worked with them, which is something she doesn't expect to find anywhere else.
With the Orwigsburg factory closing, Meck said that the Top Shoppe - which sold overruns and was of particular interest to women in Schuylkill and Berks counties - had its last sale Saturday and is closed, as is the Reading facility that employed 20 people.
"We have a location in Allentown," Meck said. "Someone is buying the assets and is going to run it."
Called Key Manufacturing, it is a trim manufacturing company and FesslerUSA employed four people there.
As for what will become of the Orwigsburg building, Meck said it already has one tenant, Warrior Boot Camp, which will be opening soon, although a defeinite date wasn't available Monday.
Meck said the building isn't owned by FesslerUSA but a different company, Meck Realty.
According to The Republican-Herald archives, Warrior Boot Camp "isn't your ordinary get fit class."
It includes using large tractor tires that one can push over, in addition to other regular equipment such as weights and kettlebells.
Chris Sanchez, a 32-year-old Orwigsburg native and former Marine, started Warrior Boot Camp at the old Fessler building, 216 W. Independence St., in downtown Orwigsburg.
"You never know what is going to happen next, so stay around for the next chapter," Meck said.