He wins when folks pedal with DeFeet.

• Author: Larson, Eric
• Position: PEOPLE, Shane Cooper - Biography

Nine years after he started Hildebran-based DeFeet International Inc., Shane Cooper watched his 25,000-square-foot apparel factory burn. The fire broke out Oct. 20, 2001, when a fluorescent-light ballast overheated and exploded. "It's hard to watch nine years of business burning out of control and not know what you're going to do."

Today, DeFeet has more than twice its original space and is back making socks for cyclists, runners and snow skiers. It also makes apparel such as cycling jerseys and bibs.

Cooper, 41, grew up in the textile and apparel business. In 1967, his father brought the family from England to the United States and serviced knitting machines in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Three years later the family moved to Hildebran, where his father worked as a consultant for textile companies, including Ellis Hosiery Mills, and started Rib-Tex, a knitting-machine distributor.

Cooper learned to use knitting machines in high school but had little interest in the business. At 19, he joined a cover band that played East Coast colleges. It broke up after six years. An avid cyclist, he worked at a Statesville bicycle shop while studying electronic engineering at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory. He earned his associate degree in 1988 and took a sales job in Charlotte with Greensboro-based Southern Foods.

Soon after, his father was diagnosed with cancer, and he returned to Hildebran to run Rib-Tex. He was experimenting with the machines when he came up with a sock design that used DuPont's synthetic CoolMax yarn to draw moisture away from the skin. While other manufacturers put the soft material on the outside...