The spin meister: yarn maker Parkdale Mills' route to No. 2 on the list revolves around Duke Kimbrell's penchant for acquisition.

• Author: McMillan, Alex Frew
• Position: CEO of North Carolina's second largest private company - Cover Story

Duke Kimbrell likes stuff. To be more specific, buying stuff. Sitting in the conference room off Garrison Boulevard in Gastonia, under the water tower boasting Parkdale Mills Inc.'s green-and-white logo, next to the plant bearing his name, he ponders his latest acquisition: a Citation VII twin-engine jet that's soon to arrive. The room is decked in we-win-awards regalia - a glass plaque declaring his induction in the Cotton Hall of Fame, the black-and-white shell for the American Textile Institute's 1997 innovation award, a glass statuette declaring Parkdale one of the North Carolina 100.

But more than any award, Kimbrell seems proudest of a foot-long model airplane, and what it represents: a green-and-white Citation V, the first jet he bought. Or his company bought. He takes full credit.

He gets up and stomps over to a New York Cotton Exchange chart on the wall that maps the commodity's highs and lows back to 1981. There's a pronounced dip in the mid-'80s. "Now this is what I want to show you - 1985, we got on the right side of that. Bought it all." Then you notice the sketch on the wall below. It's of a Citation. "I want to show you what I did. When I caught 1985, then I bought this." His index finger jabs at the drawing. I bought. Therefore I am.

The planes, now there are three, mean a lot to him. But he has bought much more - 20 to 30 companies, he estimates, since becoming CEO in 1961, when the yarn maker had one mill. It now has 31. He jokes that he can't go and visit a friend's mill because rumors will rip through the industry that he's about to buy it. Sometimes he does.

"All these people we've bought - Perfection mills, Rowan Cotton mills, Thomasville mills, the Belmont Heritage mills were direct competitors, and they were losing their ass at a time we were making money. I guess that's my life. Building up mills and making them make money. You ain't a Parkdale Mill unless it's up to the most modern, computerized, automated mill." Turning poor performers around is "what turns my adrenaline," he says.

The acquisitions have helped his company not just stay near the top of the North Carolina 100 but have propelled it almost to the crest. Parkdale has climbed from No. 11 on the first list, in 1984, to No. 2, the most significant move within the top tier. This year its sales will top $1 billion. In 1984, they were less than $200 million.

Margins are slim in yarn spinning. But being in a tough industry has allowed Parkdale to grow. Most of the companies it bought couldn't afford the capital to automate. Large apparel makers such as VF Corp. and Jockey International Inc. have called Parkdale in to consult on how to turn their mills around only to balk at the cost of upfitting them. Parkdale...