Sticking to his knitting: disasters were derailleurs that didn't derail our Small Business of the Year.

• Author: Bailey, David
• Position: COVER STORY

In the early '90s, after six years of playing bass guitar for a rock band, Shane Cooper became obsessed with bicycle racing. He didn't excel as a rider, so he took to coaching, and his team from Hickory went on to win several regional and state championships. He also became obsessed with socks--bike socks. He thought standard models--white, ankle-high throw-aways--left a lot of room for improvement. Besides being boring, they were backward. They had Coolmax, a moisture-wicking fiber, on the outside and reinforcing nylon on the inside. He wanted to turn the process inside out, putting the Coolmax next to the foot so it would suck sweat toward a knit lattice on the outside, where it would evaporate.

Cooper, then 29, happened to know more about socks than the average bass-playing biker. His British-born father was a sock-machine mechanic turned sock-machine distributor. The elder Cooper agreed to let his son re-jigger one of his machines on one condition: If he used it for 90 days, he had to buy it. All he needed was to find some Coolmax yarn, which was a problem. It was only available to authorized sock manufacturers.

That was just the first of many speed bumps and detours that Shane Cooper has had to overcome to turn DeFeet International Inc. into a leading manufacturer of cycling socks and accessories--all made in Hildebran, near Hickory. "We survived a fire, a flood and a $250,000 theft," says Cooper, now 48. Despite those setbacks, DeFeet has been back in the black since 2008. What's more, he can boast that this year's Tour de France winner, Cadel Evans, crossed the finish line with DeFeet socks on what had to be one tired pair of dogs.

"This was truly a story of determination," says Doug Salkewkz, president of Advanced Technical Welding Inc. in Etowah, last year's Business North Carolina Small Business of the Year. It's one reason Cooper's company is this year's winner. Another "is that DeFeet is a great example of a company keeping its work in North Carolina," says Salkewicz, who with N.C. Secretary of Commerce J. Keith Crisco and BNC Publisher Ben Kinney judged this year's competition, sponsored by Winston-Salem-based BB&T Corp.

DeFeet follows on the heels of a long tradition of hosiery manufacturing in a state that once bragged about knitting more socks and legwear than anywhere else on the planet. U.S. employment peaked in 1969, with about 300 companies and 107,000 workers, then began dropping, first due to consolidation, then automation and, finally, foreign competition. Now, some 110 domestic manufacturers employ 13,100, according to Dan St. Louis, director of the Manufacturing Solutions Center at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory. He estimates that 76% are in North Carolina. "When you look at the folks who have survived, there's a reason why they're here. It's a combination of market niche and a willingness to set up the plant to run quick-turn, short orders. This isn't about making a plain white sock."

Cooper couldn't agree more. Though he has tried making socks in Mexico and had to fend off Asian counterfeiters, sticking to his knitting at home has made him nimbler with a firm grip on quality control. "We're proud to make our product in America,"...