Stitch fix.

• Author: Martin, Cathy
• Position: NC TREND: Triad Region

North Carolina's privately owned companies will lose one of the oldest and largest of its ranks when Acme McCrary is sold to MAS Holdings, a Sri Lanka-based apparel company that counts Lululemon, Nike and Victoria's Secret as clients. The silver lining is that MAS plans to invest nearly $20 million to expand Acme-McCrary's Asheboro facility, adding 133 jobs.

Founded as a lingerie company 30 years ago, privately owned MAS employs more than 85,000 people in 15 countries. Though it has a design office in New York, the Randolph County plant will be MAS' first manufacturing facility in the Western Hemisphere.

Acme-McCrary was started in 1909 as a manufacturer of women's hosiery. Amid changing trends in how women dress, the company added products such as tights and leggings, eventually striking a deal with Spanx, the Atlanta-based company started in 2000 by Sara Blakely that revolutionized women's undergarments with its form-fitting, seamless apparel. The Asheboro company is owned by family and closely related parties.

In its 108 years, Acme-McCrary has been "an important employer and important part of the community," says Bonnie Renfro, president of Randolph County Economic Development, with company leaders serving on the boards of the local hospital, community college and other groups. "They were among the first companies to establish a very robust employee wellness program," she says, building in the 1940s a...