About fifteen people lost their jobs when Stitch Fix stopped working at the mill and mill in November, Ford said. He added that some of them had been working on the sites for decades.
“All these skills would have been lost,” he said.
By March, the facilities had reopened as Buck Mason Knitting Mills, and many of the employees who had worked there were rehired at Stitch Fix.
A cloth mill in Shillington began producing fabric for Buck Mason shirts and other shirts using cotton grown in California, Georgia and Texas. Albert Breika, who was hired by Buck Mason as head knitter at the factory in January, said there are plans to release a limited edition shirt made from the fabric produced at the facility on a 1940s-era Singer Supreme machine. Mr. Breika, 66, who lives in nearby Leesport, Pennsylvania, and who previously worked at Stitch Fix at the factory, added that her Singer Supreme machine is one of the few still in operation.
At the Mohenton factory, some employees are responsible for cutting and sewing shirts, while others iron them by hand or pack them for shipment. Ford said about 10,000 shirts are made there each month. “By fall, we aim to double capacity,” he added. “The goal is to quadruple it.”
Plame, who lives in the area, said the factory in Mohenton, a small borough in Berks County, Pennsylvania, produced military caps and uniforms before switching to T-shirts. He added that during the facilities’ heyday, in the late 1970s, the factory and mill employed about 100 workers, and the factory produced about 22,000 T-shirts per week using fabric from the factory.