Melancholy Dane gets Chatham down.

• Position: Chatham Manufacturing, North Carolina

Melancholy Dane gets Chatham down

Something rotten in the state of Denmark is fouling up Elkin.

Chatham Manufacturing, which employs more than 2,200 in a hamlet of 4,000 people, was a family-owned North Carolina company for more than 111 years. Its board sported some of the state's biggest names: Hanes, Dickson, Womble. But in 1988, a Danish company -- Northern Feather Ltd. -- started buying Chatham stock. Eventually, the upholstery-fabric and blanket maker fell into the Danes' hands in a $92.4 million stock buyout.

People worried about foreigners ruining Chatham, which had after-tax profits of $6.25 million on sales of $126 million in fiscal 1987. But President Alan Payne maintained that the company was prospering. He told the Charlotte Textile Club on Nov. 12 how foreign ownership was opening up the world market to Chatham's products.

"I didn't have the full story then," Payne says now. "I didn't know the books were strange."

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