STICKING TOGETHER: After 137 years working through tumult in the furniture and textile industries, a thriving tape business binds a Hickory family.

• Author: Perlmutt, David

Like many business owners facing the worst recession in decades, brothers Jim and Stephen Shuford became crisis managers as consumer confidence, net worths and jobs began to rapidly vanish. It was early 2009, and their Hickory-based company, Shurtape Technologies, had recorded a 20% decline in sales the previous year, a rout that wasn't unusual for U.S. manufacturers rocked by the economic downturn. Yet amid the despair of the Great Recession, the brothers found opportunity when their largest customer--an Ohio-based tape distributor that did $75 million of annual business with Shurtape--was suddenly placed on the auction block by its German owner.

The Shufords decided they had to make a bid or risk losing a vital chunk of their business. One big challenge loomed: They had to line up bank debt to finance the deal. In a normal economy, bankers would rush to work with the Shufords, fifth-generation members of a blue-blooded North Carolina manufacturing family. But these weren't ordinary times. About 15 banks turned the brothers down before they signed agreements with four lenders.

"I went home and told my wife and kids, 'This deal is either going to be the best thing that ever happened to us, or the worst,'" says Jim Shuford, chief executive officer of Shurtape's parent company, STM Industries. "To double down in '09, when everybody's running for the hills, we knew it was a really big swing at the plate."

The gamble paid off: Revenue has more than doubled since Shurtape's 2009 acquisition of Ohio-based Manco Inc. and is on pace to reach about $650 million this year. The company ranks second in consumer-tape sales, trailing 3M Corp, the St. Paul, Minn.-based industrial-products giant. With roots dating to the 19th century, Shurtape remains an important economic force in the Hickory/Lenoir/Morganton metro area, which has lost 20% of its manufacturing jobs since 2007.

Over the years, Shurtape's array of sticky products has patched a plane mauled by a bear, repaired broken fingernails, boats and cars, and rescued brides from embarrassment by shoring up wedding gowns suddenly splitting at the seams. Its tapes have saved thousands of DIY projects and kept tattered wallets and briefcases from finding trash cans. High-school students compete for scholarships by fashioning stunning prom dresses and tuxes from designer Duck Tape, offered in 30 colors and 70 patterns.

There are hundreds of intended uses, too. The company makes more than 650 different types and colors of tape that serve the packaging, painting, HVAC, construction and other industries under names including Shurtape, FrogTape, T-Rex and ShurFlex. Traditional uses include sealing heating and cooling ducts and blocking moisture from crawl spaces and windows. There are tapes that glow in the dark, seal boxes, fix cracks and pry lint from clothes --cloth tapes, paper tapes, aluminum-foil tapes, plastic and vinyl tapes, and double-sided tapes.

"If you need a tape to stick two objects together, we make it--or we can figure it out," says Jim, 51. He runs Shurtape with CEO Stephen, 48. Their sister, Dorothy Shuford Lanier of Bedford, N.Y., is a part-owner not involved in the day-to-day operation. In 2016, the 1,500-employee company sold 733 million square yards of tape--enough tape, cut into 2-inch strips, to stretch to the moon and back 16 times.

Shurtape's headquarters is a sleek, 60,000-square-foot former car dealership in Hickory that sold and serviced Cadillacs, Porsches and other luxury cars. At the 600,000-square-foot former Manco plant in Avon, Ohio--a Cleveland suburb that...