>>Bayard Winthrop: We were impacting factories that had been idle or close to idle for many,
many years.
We were hiring in places that had not seen hiring in a long time.
It wasn't just the sewers.
It was also the people that were behind the supply chain.
That's Jerry Hamill on the far left, one of our key cotton growers and his team of people
that harvest bring their cotton to market.
He is a North Carolina based cotton farmer.
And like many of these examples, he is one of these sort of generational businesses that
have been around for a long time in the apparel trade.
The ginning and the yarning facilities.
Parkdale Mills, in this case in Gaffney, South Carolina.
Interestingly enough, one of the most modern yarning -- maybe the most modern yarning facility
in the world in a tiny town that you might all know from the Peachoid, from the Netflix
political series.
That town actually has one of the most modern yarning facilities in the world in it.
To the yarners, impacting the yarners, and up the chain to Carolina Cotton Works or dyers
and finishers, owned by the Ashby family, a third generation family that has been knitting,
dyeing and finishing fabric.
We're now the largest customer of CCW.
And all along the way, we found ourselves not only impacting the front end of the production
line but the layers and layers of people down the supply chain.
And that -- When you've spent your career manufacturing and you've spent your career
in, at least in my case, being removed almost arm's length from your manufacturing process,
when you suddenly find yourself diving deep down into the supply chain for me it was a
pretty profound experience and got me to rethink what it means when you build a product.
What consumers value in making a product.
In towns like Middlesex, North Carolina which is about 20 miles outside of Raleigh in Nash
County, when we first arrived in Middlesex in 2012 or 2013, unemployment was north of
13%.
It is a town that looks very much like other towns around Raleigh.
Lots and lots of old vacant warehouses that now suddenly were -- it's funny.
I remember clearly going into this facility for the first time and it was just filled
with parking spaces.
I pulled up right in front, went inside, met the line supervisors.
Today if you go to that facility there's no room in that parking lot.
They actually moved to a field next-door and the parking lot is overflowing there.
That's an interesting thing.
It's an interesting thing that we really set out about to do with a fairly narrow goal.
We sort of looked at this thing and said we want to do -- consumers are driving something
interesting.
They are saying in industry after industry pay attention to the things that matter to
us.
Pay attention to the quality.
Pay attention to the value.
Pay attention to the brand values.
Don't invest in anything else.
That simple idea for us took us both down a path of a manufacturing process that was
fascinating to me and was interesting and had us impact a whole bunch of interesting
layers of the supply chain but more broadly got me to begin to think about what change
is in front of us.
As technology begins to move into not just software and businesses that maybe are more
digital -- digitally scalable but into old-world manufacturing businesses, what does that open
up for the consumer and their ability to have an impact on the kind of change or businesses
that they want to support.
I think that -- and all of you, if you have a badge on your -- in your Google Zeitgeist
badge, in there there is sort of an archaic note about a special gift at the concierge
desk.
It's a sweatshirt for all of you.
I hope you go pick it up.
[ Cheers and Applause ] When you get it, I hope -- you know, I hope
you look at it.
I hope you like the sweatshirt.
I hope it fits you correctly, hope we got the size right, all that sort of stuff, but
more importantly I hope it stimulates thinking of what the next wave of change is going to
look like on the heels of technology and what does that mean for us as consumers and how
we can impact the things that matter to us, whatever that means.
Whether it's American manufacturing or something else.
How technology is unlocking the ability for us as consumers to begin to direct our dollars
to things that matter for us.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]