Weaving history: sticking to Burke County amid the textile industry's flight overseas, Valdese Weavers is sharing its wealth with the company's 950 employees.

• Author: Williams, Allison

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

It's wrong to say not much has changed at the century-old Valdese Weavers, but walk the same narrow aisles between roaring machines manned by craftsmen who nimbly pluck state-of-the-art controls or the single broken thread among thousands, and it would be easy to be fooled.

A drive into the eponymous town off Interstate 40, about an hour northwest of Charlotte, is to roll back in time. The Old Colony Players re-enact the story of the Waldensians who settled here for tourists who fill an amphitheater on weekends each summer. Waldensian Presbyterian Church members sing hymns in French every February and August, a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages. Valdese Weavers itself has withstood textile's steady march overseas, standing as the only mill of its kind in North America.

Even as the company celebrated its centennial last year, CEO Michael Shelton was negotiating perhaps the biggest change in its history: the handoff from the Shuford family, which owned the plant for 80 of those 100 years, to its 950 employees. In May, Valdese Weavers became one of the largest employee-owned companies in the state, and in June, Shelton and other company leaders held meetings with workers to explain what a 100% employee stock-ownership plan means. In a nutshell: The next century is up to them.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

A.A. Shuford, a Civil War veteran who walked from the battlefield back to his hometown in nearby Hickory, founded Shuford Mills in 1880, along with other businesses including Hickory's First National Bank and its first telephone company. Shuford Mills' main product was string before Americans used tape to hold their packages tight. When 3M Corp.'s Scotch tape took off after World War II, the Shufords opened a small pilot plant to make masking tape that has grown into Shurtape Technologies, still based in Hickory. They acquired the Duck tape brand in 2009. Still making furniture there, too, is Century Furniture, a company Harley Shuford, a grandson of A. A. Shuford, started in 1947. It was Harley Shuford who bought the Swiss Embroidery Co. out of bankruptcy in 1935 and renamed it Valdese.

Today, Shelton says Valdese is the largest provider of decorative fabric for the home, specializing in what's known as jacquard, the textured coverings seen on sofas in the most recent Pottery Barn catalog or covering your...