The door to the US organic cotton farming world was opened to us by a group of people, who on their own have great bragging rights in the world of sustainability: Lynda Grose, Jill Dumain of Patagonia, and through their assistance, Kelly Pepper of the Texas Organic Cotton Marketing Cooperative (TOCMC) in Lubbock, Texas. This co-op has around 40 producer members, with about 150 employees, who plant 18 - 20,000 acres of organic and transitional cotton each year. In recent years, these acres have produced anywhere from 11,000 - 17,000 bales of cotton—roughly 80 – 90% of all organic cotton grown in the US. TOCMC and its members are certified organic under the United States Department of Agriculture National Organic Program.

Incredibly, each single bale of cotton produced within the co-op is tracked from the field to the customer. As a consumer, we have the ability to know our cotton producer’s name and the farm from which each bale was purchased.

And while all of our medium-weight organic cotton jersey comes from cotton grown in Lubbock, the same is not true for our lightweight organic cotton jersey or rib-knit. Since NAFTA was put into effect, the United States has lost many small spinning operations. As a result, there is currently no domestic capability to spin the fine yarns required to make lightweight cotton jersey. Because this cotton cannot be spun in the United States, it is therefore organically grown and spun overseas, and then sent to the United States where it is knit, dyed, washed, cut, and made into garments.

Once our US organic cotton is picked, it is ginned in about seven different cotton gins within the state of Texas. These gins employ about 70 people total. The ginning process cleans the cotton, removing dirt, burs, stems, and leaves that adhere to the fiber. Then the cotton fibers are pulled from the seeds.

After being ginned, our cotton is shipped to warehouses associated with TOCMC. These three warehouses, employing roughly 45 people, prepare our ginned cotton for shipping.

Once the cotton fiber is clean and prepared, it is sent to be spun into yarn. Over the years, our cotton has traveled to Parkdale Mills and Hill Spinning Mill, both in North Carolina. Parkdale has 25 plants and 2,300 total employees, and Hill has 29 total employees, most of whom have been with the company for 20 to 30 years. While they are not certified facilities, they do produce to Global Organic Textile Standards. (Oftentimes, companies choose not to be certified due to high costs.)

From the spinner, our cotton moves to Signet Mills (formerly Green Textile) in South Carolina, a fourth-generation, family-owned and operated company that has been in operation since 1938. Here our fiber is knit into fabric. The knitting process uses only natural oils and finishing agents—nothing synthetic. 

Once the cotton has become fabric it is dyed at Signet Mills in South Carolina, using low impact, cold process, environmentally friendly dyes. We also work with Stony Creek Colors in Tennessee to produce naturally dyed light and dark indigo fabrics. Once the fabric is dyed, it is shipped to us in Florence, Alabama, where we use it to create our Alabama Chanin products.

In addition to the 30 part- and full-time employees at The Factory (including our store + café, production, design, media, education and workshops teams, and Building 14 machine manufacturing), we work with 25 artisans in the surrounding communities in northern Alabama and southern Tennessee. Each of these people must work seamlessly with the next in order for our fabric to be cut and painted in our studio, then either hand sewn by our artisans or machine sewn in Bldg. 14 before it arrives to you.