Manufacturer finds itself in tall cotton.

• Position: Triad - Geographic overview

As apparel manufacturing has moved offshore, the distance the average cotton T-shirt travels from farm to customer has reached 16,000 miles. Not only has outsourcing cost the state jobs, it creates a gigantic carbon footprint, says Eric Henry, president of Burlington-based TS Designs Inc. Considering the amount of cotton picked in North Carolina, the nation's fourth-largest producer in 2010, Henry believes both consequences are unnecessary.

So in 2008, TS Designs, a T-shirt printer and dyer, launched its Cotton of the Carolinas brand, which sources everything--including cotton and manufacturing--within the state. It contracts Thurman Burleson & Sons Farm in New London, just outside of Asheboro, to grow cotton and Wendell-based Mortex Corp. to make shirts that it dyes and prints on a mostly made-to-order basis "It only makes sense to bring production back to improve jobs and the environment," Henry says. Cotton of the Carolinas has become TS Designs' most popular brand, prompting the company to order 60,000 pounds of cotton this year, double last year's order.

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CEO Tim Sineath, 60, started TS Designs in 1977 in Graham after earning a master's in product design from N.C. State University. About that same time, Henry opened a T-shirt screen-printing business in his dorm room at N.C. State before transferring to UNC...