“When I said to my manufacturer ‘you are literally taking my intellectual property,’ he said ‘business is business’ and that I couldn’t do anything about it. I said, ‘watch me.’”
The origin of Origin apparel and footwear is right here in the USA.
Origin owner and founder Pete Roberts likes to say the company’s products are “made in America without compromise.” That is because every facet of Origin’s clothes and footwear is entirely sourced and manufactured in the United States.
Roberts developed a strategy in 2011 when he launched Origin in a small timber-frame factory that he built in the woods of Farmington, Maine.
“The intent was to keep all the products made in the United States and it was to make sure every bit and piece of material and component parts came from the soil beneath our feet,” said Roberts. “It was everything. The fiber, the thread, the yarn, the fabric, the brass eyelets all came from U.S. soil, and we stick to that intent today.”
Roberts’ initiation into the Made in USA market came after a frustrating encounter with a Pakastani manufacturer who was making Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training uniforms for his startup company.
“I’m from New England so I used to hear my grandfather and great-grandmother talking about working in the old spinning mills and tanneries, and I said there has got to be some manufacturing here, but I couldn’t find any,” said Roberts. “So, I ended up importing from Pakistan for the first year of business. But what I discovered was that everything I sent to Pakistan, they were ripping it off and selling to other brands in European countries.
“When I said to my manufacturer ‘you are literally taking my intellectual property,’ he said ‘business is business’ and that I couldn’t do anything about it. I said, ‘watch me.’”
As an aggressive 32-year-old at the time, Roberts was not going to sit idly by and be intimidated by a foreign manufacturer. So, he undertook what he calls today “a crime of passion.”
“I cut down a forest in the woods behind my house in Maine and built a timber-frame factory with my friends,” said Roberts. “Out came the chain saws and the axes and we built a 6,000-square-foot factory with big Eastern White Pine trees. We did it like an old-school barn raising.”
Roberts was determined to never again use a foreign manufacturer or supplier. So, he set about to reclaim the skills and machinery necessary to manufacture in the U.S. With the help of some old looms and sewing machines and input from old-time makers, he learned how to find, fix and operate the tools of apparel manufacturing.
“To reclaim the knowledge was a slow and arduous process because it was just me and my first employee learning all this stuff,” said Roberts, now 46. “Once we got momentum, we really got momentum. We kept passing this knowledge on to new employees, going from just two of us to almost 400 employees now.
“When we started it was mostly a reclamation project. We didn’t have the funds so we scoured all the denim mills of New England and we took everything we could, all the rusty machinery, and literally dragged it back to the woods and brought it back to life.”
Today Origin manufactures men’s clothing at its 170,000-square foot factory in Asheboro, North Carolina, including an American-made line of denim jeans. Fleece products, T-shirts and chino pants are also made at the Asheboro plant.
Origin’s headquarters is still in Farmington, where it all began. The production of its footwear and the Jiu-Jitsu garments is done at two 20,000-square-foot facilities in the Pine Tree State. The company also has a 17,000-square foot raw materials warehouse near Farmington.
“Our denim factory is probably the last remaining denim manufacturer east of the Mississippi River,” said Roberts. “We bought this from an old-timer three years ago and we dumped close to $10 million into the project and resurrected the factory.
“All of our denim is woven in Trion, Georgia at Mount Vernon Mills. It is the last real denim mill in the U.S. They weave our denim with all U.S.-grown cotton and U.S. labor.”
All other fabrics are sourced in America as well, with South Carolina’s Milliken Mills being a major player.
“We have to be very thoughtful about sourcing the fabric because if we build the wrong product and it gets rejected by the consumer, then we screw not only ourselves but our whole supply chain,” added Roberts. “We try to make sure we are building three or more products from one textile. If that is the case we can build a pant, and a short, and a shirt, and a hat or bag out of the same textile. That’s really important to us.”
The internal culture at Origin is based on the phrase “Better Than Berry,” referring to the 1941 Berry Amendment passed by Congress that protects the domestic textile and clothing industry during wartime.
When people walk away at the end of the day they look back and say, ‘we made that thing together.’ I just think there is a value proposition there that we have lost in just becoming consumers.
Pete Roberts, Origin founder
“Berry is what the federal government says, then there is what we say, which is, we exhaust all efforts to source and make in America,” said Roberts. “Better Than Berry is our Built by Freedom. It’s the way we look at what USA manufacturing should be, not what the legalese says.”
Roberts and his team at Origin are bringing this message to a younger group of inexperienced workers.
“We have a lot of young people, and we like to train people with no skills. In Maine, I would say most of our employees are aged between 25 to 35 years old. I prefer to bring somebody in that we can train from scratch, and it has worked wonderfully for us.”
Roberts believes that manufacturing is one of the core values of freedom. Bringing people together in close proximity in its manufacturing plants, he argues, aids personal growth and people’s respect for each other.
“I don’t believe we can be a service-based nation and a nation of only consumers,” he said. “I think that’s a recipe for disaster. Factories were the melting pot of all people. Everybody came in and worked in the factories and melded together. I think what we have in America right now is the lack of respect for each other.
“I have witnessed this collaboration in my own factories. When people walk away at the end of the day they look back and say, ‘we made that thing together.’ I just think there is a value proposition there that we have lost in just becoming consumers.”
Roberts’ formula has led to a successful Made in America business. Origin is consistently seeing year-over-year growth with increases from 20- to 30% annually. And Origin will be launching its first women’s products this fall with the unveiling of women’s denim line.
Origin apparel and footwear is priced for the middle market, somewhere between fast and designer fashion.
“We are very competitive. We’re not Walmart but we’re not fashion either,” said Roberts. “A pair of jeans is a hundred bucks. We are not selling jeans for $500. Our apparel and footwear is right in line with anything you would expect from a high-quality, not fashion but premium brand.”
With a 100 percent sourced and manufactured brand that is creating from field to finish, Origin is just going to keep on doing what it has been doing since inception – make it in America with American workers.
Origin products are available only online at the company website. But keep an eye out: Origin plans on opening retail outlet stores across the country in the next few years.