Throwaway success: Swannanoa company finds a niche in making wipes, helping revitalize one of North Carolina's storied textile plants.

• Author: Williams, Allison
• Position: Cover story

For generations, textile mills dotted the Carolinas, including Charles D. Owen's, once the world's largest blanket factory and by far the biggest employer in North Carolina's picturesque Swannanoa Valley. When blankets joined manufacturing's slow march overseas, left behind was another empty, dilapidated plant in the heart of a small Southern town. Where most saw an eyesore, Jeff Slosman spied opportunity. While it's a stretch to say he has brought manufacturing back to Swannanoa, National Wiper Alliance hired back half of the blanket factory's remaining 54 workers and poured $5 million into renovating the nine-building campus. The company has a current workforce of 85 employees. Last year, revenue totaled $10.5 million.

This story of rebirth prompted the judges of Business North Carolina's annual competition to recognize National Wiper as the state's Small Business of the Year. "This is not rocket ships, there's no glitz or glamour, but they've built one heck of a successful growth business," says Scott Daugherty, director of the N.C. Small Business and Technology Development Center and one of the judges in the contest sponsored by Southern Pines-based First Bank. The other judges were Oscar Wong, founder of Asheville-based Highland Brewing Co., last year's winner, and BNC Publisher Ben Kinney.

On a rainy day at the peak of leaf season, when tourists pack the mountain towns surrounding nearby Asheville, workers in masks bundle pristine stacks of dry wipes bound for restaurants, nursing homes, even aircraft carriers, submarines and automobile plants. They may be used for wiping down a table after a fast-food lunch or the sleek body of a new airplane rolling off the assembly line. "You can be in a bagel factory in the morning," Slosman says about places he has seen his wipes in action, "and then in the afternoon you're watching smart bombs being made."

Meet the new textile. Where a reusable cotton cloth used to reign, convenience has replaced it with a dry, nonwoven wipe that can be thrown away after a single use. There are so many varieties even Slosman loses count. Labs in three states test them. Wipes used in restaurants, for example, are held to such high standards, the Swannanoa plant undergoes the same inspections as a factory where cookies or cereal are produced. Military contractors who depend on wipes produced here rely that they won't break down bonds on a C-130 airplane made in Marietta, Ga. or Meridian, Miss. Longtime customer...