Baseball-glove maker near Dallas still having a ball
This little brick factory isn’t supposed to be here. It should be in the Philippines, or Vietnam, maybe China. Not here, in the heart of Texas.
Baseball gloves, like many other things, aren’t really made in America anymore. In the 1960s, production shifted to Asia and never came back. It might be America’s favorite pastime, and few things are more personal to baseball-lovers than their first glove — the smell, the feel, the memory of childhood summers. But most gloves are stitched together thousands of miles away by people who couldn’t afford a ticket at Fenway Park.
One company didn’t get the memo. Since the Great Depression, Nokona has been making gloves in a small town outside Dallas with a long history of producing boots and whips for cowboys. There’s a livestock-feed store next door to the factory, which offers $5 tours for visitors who want to see how the “last American ball glove” is made. You can watch employees weave the webbing by hand, feed the laces through the holes with needles, and pound the pocket into shape with a rounded hammer. The American flag gets stitched into the hide – and that, they say at Nokona, is more than just a business matter.
“Made in America means you believe in our country,” said Carla Yeargin, a glove inspector and tour guide at Nokona, where she worked her way up from janitor. “We have the love for the ballglove, because we made it here.”
And the final product could cost you 25 times more than a foreign-made version at the local discount store. Yes, that’s partly a reflection of the premium nature of the Nokona line but still it represents a huge challenge for the company, as well as for Donald Trump.
“Making it here” is a big deal for the president. Last month Trump staged a week of events to celebrate U.S. manufacturing, showcasing products from Campbell’s soup to Caterpillar construction gear. July 17 was declared “Made in America Day.”
“Restoring American manufacturing will not only restore our wealth, it will restore our pride,” Trump said.
Trump’s message also represents a break from the globalization gospel preached by his predecessors as they pushed for trade deals that would bring emerging giants such as China into the capitalist fold. Offshoring production was seen as acceptable, because it would make American economies more competitive. That, added to cheap imports, would leave the U.S. economy better off.
Nokona refused to follow the herd.
After the Civil War, ranchers drove longhorn cattle through Montague County to livestock markets in the north. The town of Nocona, about 100 miles northwest of Dallas and named after a Comanche chief (hence the Native American logo on Nokona gloves), developed a reputation as a leathergoods hub.
The company’s name is spelled with a “k” because the company was told in the 1930s that the town’s name couldn’t be trademarked. Today, Nocona is home to about 3,000 people and a few stoplights. “God Bless America” banners line the street, and locals wish you a “blessed day.”
Founded in 1926, the company originally made wallets and purses. It was a former Rice University baseball player named Roberts Storey who steered Nokona into ballgloves.
The shift to Asia in the 1960s nearly put Nokona out of business. Storey wouldn’t budge. “It hit him all wrong that we would have to go to Japan,” said his grandson Rob Storey, the company’s executive vice president. “One of his favorite sayings was: ‘If I have to tell my employees we’re closing up and they don’t have jobs anymore, I may as well get a bucket of worms and go fishing.’ “
It hasn’t been an easy faith to keep. The company went bankrupt in 2010 but continued producing after a Phoenix-based maker of football gloves bought a majority stake. And cracks are starting to show in Nokona’s claim to be allamerican. It recently started importing partially assembled gloves from China made of Kip leather, a luxury cowhide.
Still, 98 percent of its gloves are made at the fac- tory in Nocona.
The company emphasizes the craft that goes into each glove, and that’s reflected in the bill. Rawlings has gloves for all budgets: Its top-end models cost plenty, but you can get a 9inch children’s version for less than $8. Nokona’s equivalent-sized mitt costs $220, and its pro model runs to $500.
Nokona ships about 40,000 gloves a year, a fraction of the 6.2 million sold annually in the U.S. It employs about 35 people at the Texas plant. Storey won’t disclose the privately held company’s revenue. “Will we ever be Nike? No.” But he says it’s profitable.