What a ride
Kitsbow’s first year in Old Fort was filled with twists, turns and success
Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
January 3, 2021
Kitsbow CEO and Black Mountain resident David Billstrom, who moved the cycling apparel company from Petaluma, California to Old Fort in 2019, showcases the company’s signature Icon shirts, made with Pendleton wool from Portland. Photo by Fred McCormick
The dawn of 2020 marked the beginning of a momentous year for Kitsbow Cycling and Mountain Bike Apparel. The manufacturing company, founded by Zander Nosler in Petaluma, California in 2012, was in the first weeks of a new era in the center of historic downtown Old Fort, where it had just relocated to a beautifully renovated building once home to Parker Hosiery.
The inaugural year in the shadow of the Pisgah National Forest was undoubtedly a pivotal one, but it will be best remembered as the moment the company was tested by a global pandemic, and redefined by its response.
Kitsbow made big news in August of 2019 when it announced it would move its technical mountain biking apparel manufacturing operations and headquarters 2,600 miles east, bringing more than two dozen jobs to a community with a proud history of production.
Black Mountain resident and Kitsbow CEO David Billstrom was relatively familiar with Old Fort when the company began considering relocation in an effort to build a sustainable workforce. The semi-retired venture capitalist had been an early investor in the company while “living in paradise” with his wife, Jennifer. The avid cyclists co-founded Velo Girl Rides, and spent much of their time hosting events and leading guided tours throughout Western North Carolina and beyond.
Nosler approached Billstrom, whose 39-year career includes executive roles with Walt Disney and Intel Corp., about leading the Kitsbow team in 2018. As a board member at the time, Billstrom was thoroughly impressed with the company’s lean manufacturing approach, based on the “Toyota Way” principles. The model emphasizes a culture that supports productivity by providing adequate resources for workers in a respectful environment.
“Jen was looking to turn down the volume on the bike tours, so I was working remotely to run the company,” Billstrom said. “I was having so much fun that it quickly became full-time and we moved to California.”
The CEO quickly discovered two hurdles in the company’s effort to produce high-quality, American-made cycling apparel on the west coast.
“Not only could we not afford to pay people who could sew in California, but there weren’t any,” Billstrom said. In January of 2019, the company began eyeing a move to the Appalachian Mountains and raised $2 million in capital to support the relocation. By that summer, Kitsbow narrowed the list to 10 locations, none of which were Old Fort. In fact, the leading candidate was Fries, Virginia on the New River.
“(Executive Director of the McDowell County Economic Development Association) Chuck Abernathy, who is really the reason why Kitsbow is here, told me there was a building to look at that wasn’t on my list,” Billstrom recalled. “It was in Old Fort, and he asked if I’d considered Old Fort. I told him no.”
Billstrom estimates he and his wife had biked through the town “at least 500 times” before that moment, frequenting the nearby trails that snaked down the mountain from their Black Mountain home, but a memory from their second date immediately came to mind.
“We love Old Fort, but when we finished that ride we wanted to get something to eat and there really weren’t many options there,” he said. “So we got home and Googled it, and we found out it was a ‘dry town,’ so no restaurants could really survive.”
That all changed in August of 2019 when a bill allowing breweries to sell their own beer in town’s prohibiting alcohol sales was signed into law by the governor, paving the way for Old Fort’s first brewery — Hillman Beer. As the Asheville-based brewery announced it would build a second location in the old Parker Hosiery building, the town suddenly became a “Goldilocks location” for Kitsbow.
“Beer and bikes go together in a big way,” Billstrom said. “We were already riding our bikes to Pisgah Brewing Co. Wednesday night for like five years. So, if Kitsbow could be aligned with the first beer legal in Old Fort since prohibition, we’ve got something. I told the board I think we have a winner.”
When the ribbon was cut and Kitsbow began operation in the 100,000-square-foot building it now shares with Hillman and the Arrowhead Gallery, the company was poised for a big year.
Pivoting in a pandemic
The first few weeks of production in Old Fort were smooth for Kitsbow, as Jessie Inglis, the only employee to make the move from Petaluma to WNC, began training new local workers. The director of production was enjoying her new surroundings and her work with a company that emphasizes problem solving and fosters camaraderie among its staff.
“My real passion is sewing and construction and learning how to put things together,” she said. “When I first started, I was actually hired to write down instructions for how we were making everything at that time. We had a really small office in Petaluma and all of us worked there together, so I was working with Zander, David and our vice president Tim Clark in the same room. That gave me access to a lot of knowledge and ideas, and the experience was incredibly educational.”
Jessie Inglis, the director of production for Kitsbow, was the sole employee to move 2,600 miles east with the company in 2019, and instrumental in the manufacturer’s pivot from cycling apparel to PPE during the pandemic. Photo courtesy of Kitsbow
Inglis began passing that knowledge down to new employees like senior cutter Heath Cooper, a native of Old Fort who lives minutes away from the front door of the production facility who was among the first local employees hired by the company.
“When I first started we didn’t really even have titles,” he said. “We were just doing whatever needed to be done, like building shelving and organizing the work space. But, Jessie is such an excellent teacher that we were all able to learn everything quickly by the time production started.”
Sewing stations that can be moved to strategic locations on the floor to accommodate specific orders were stitching together Pendleton wool fabric to create Kitsbow’s signature Icon line of shirts and a small assortment of other merchandise.
While the majority of materials used for Kitsbow products was sourced in the U.S., the company was relying on suppliers in other countries, including China, for fasteners and some fabrics. When their overseas contacts were set to return from the Lunar New Year holiday on Feb. 8, 2020, however, phone calls and emails were going unanswered.
“That’s when I realized COVID-19 was going to be a real problem,” Billstrom said. “It had completely shut down China from our perspective.”
Kitsbow was faced with an unprecedented dilemma less than 90 days into the company’s first year in its new location.
“I’m a guy who uses data, and I’m as emotional as the next person but I try not to make emotional decisions in business,” Billstrom said. “So by March 3, I realized there was no vaccine, it was clearly spreading rapidly and it was obviously causing major problems in China.”
The issue, he told his employees at the time, was not a political one.
“Every day I would remind them that we needed to be safe, because if anybody in here went home and had contact with the virus we would have to shut down for two weeks,” he said. “That’s the flip side of the made-to-order model, we have to keep making stuff to sell it.”
Thorough sanitation standards were implemented and Billstrom had every employee tested as soon as tests were available. While the staff was able to stay healthy, the supply chain issue overseas continued to complicate matters and the board of directors met March 19 to discuss potential layoffs.
“At that time, N.C. was considering the stay-at-home orders that were ultimately put in place later that month,” Billstrom said. “Some of our national suppliers were already sending employees home. But we didn’t feel like layoffs or furloughs were the right thing to do.”
While the pandemic commenced its grip on the U.S., and sufficient Personal Protective Equipment was as vital as it was scarce for frontline workers, the founder of Kitsbow had an idea that would not only help the company survive the crisis, but also help fight it.
The same day the board decided not to stop work at Kitsbow, Nosler sent an email from California with a design for a clear plastic face shield to be worn over masks. The company’s existing supply of elastic could be used in conjunction with plastic and foam, both of which were available for purchase online, to produce face shields.
“I knew we had to do this,” said Billstrom, who himself has been a volunteer firefighter with the Swannanoa Fire Department for more than 11 years. “I’ve been a first responder for almost 40 years, and I knew how important PPE was from that perspective.”
Kitsbow’s team developed a prototype, tested and refined it. Just three days after the company was considering the viability of operating during a pandemic, the first few hundred face shields were ready to ship. And, designers were already collaborating to create filtered masks.
On March 21, Billstrom posted three photos on his personal Facebook page showing the first face shields and mask designs. It was shared 634 times, and a flood of emails and phone calls inquiring about PPE came in.
The company responded to the overwhelming need by temporarily suspending their apparel operations to exclusively manufacture PPE.
By New Year’s Eve of 2020, Kitsbow had expanded to 56 full-time employees. The company produced more than 100,000 fabric face masks and donated more than 40,000 face shields and masks to schools and nonprofits.
The company’s initial goal was to expand to 40 employees by the end of their first year in Old Fort, but the demand for quality PPE was as unprecedented as the situation that required it.
Making it happen
Generally, it would be cumbersome if not impossible to modify a manufacturing operation to address a public health crisis, but Kitsbow was uniquely suited for the task.
The lean manufacturing model allows sewing machines to be moved to maintain social distancing, and places an emphasis on maintaining a clean work space. It is the employees, however, who made it possible, according to Billstrom.
“Here we go again,” Inglis recalled thinking when the company announced what is now referred to around the facility as “The Pivot”. “Kitsbow isn’t scared of making big decisions, and by that time I knew we had established the team dynamic between the employees. I was pretty excited.”
As a native of Old Fort, Cooper was proud that his employer found a way to not only stay open, but to address a crucial need.
“Any time you help someone you feel good about what you’re doing,” the senior cutter said. “To do it on this large of a scale, with people coming from all different kinds of backgrounds, that’s a tremendous feeling.”
While existing employees adapted quickly to PPE production, Kitsbow was asking for anyone with sewing experience to take a simple test to determine if they could fill the positions needed to keep up with the growing demand.
Scott Thompson, a co-owner of a business in the Grove Park Arcade, was one of more than two dozen employees hired by Kitsbow to sew PPE in March of 2020. Many, including Thompson, remained with the Old Fort company permanently. Photo courtesy of Kitsbow
Scott Thompson, one of four owners of Serenity + Scott Apothecary in the Grove Park Arcade, was forced to step away from the day-to-day business as retail merchants around the country closed to slow the spread of COVID-19.
“Once we realized the pandemic was going to last for a while, I knew I was going to have to take on a job,” he said. “I knew it was going to take some time to get our business back up and running.”
He learned about Kitsbow through a friend, and knew his sewing experience would likely get him the job.
“But the thing that really stood out was how great the people are,” Thompson said. “Jessie’s skill, knowledge and management style are amazing, and she is great at what she does. That really has a positive impact on the whole team.”
Inglis found it easier to remain positive and committed to weathering the pandemic through her work at Kitsbow.
“Not only did we get to keep our jobs, but we created more,” she said. “We had restaurants closing all over the area and at least some of those people were able to use their sewing skills to keep working through everything. It was definitely something special to be a part of.”
Kitsbow goes to Congress
It didn’t take long for Kitsbow’s pivot to PPE to receive attention. Regionally, they provided thousands of face shields and masks for frontline workers through partnerships with Dogwood Health Trust, the Buncombe County Emergency Operations Center and McDowell County EMS.
In late June, Billstrom received an email from the office of Congressman Andy Kim, chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Economic Growth, Tax and Capital Access. The nine-member panel operates within the Committee on Small Businesses.
The Kitsbow CEO was invited to testify remotely in a hearing on supply chain resiliency amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We made our decision to pivot on that day of our board meeting, and we ordered materials that four days later we wouldn’t have been able to order,” Billstrom said. “If we had been four or five days slower, we wouldn’t have been able to do any of this.”
Kitsbow and its retail establishment Old Fort Ride House moved into a renovated section of the former Parker Hosiery building at 59 Commerce Street in 2019. The company doubled its number of employees as it manufactured PPE through most of 2020. Photo by Fred McCormick
Billstrom’s testimony provided a thorough timeline of events, and a report on how Kitsbow’s model and the timing of their decision to pivot to PPE put the company in a unique position to adapt in the face of a pandemic. He also provided insight into how Food and Drug Administration regulations created stumbling blocks along the way.
His written testimony addressed specific issues with regulation compliance that proved challenging to navigate in the early months of the COVID-19 crisis.
“The FDA was great in a lot of ways, but there were also some missed opportunities, especially for small businesses,” Billstrom said. “So, I appreciated the opportunity to testify from the perspective of a small business.”
Like riding a bike
By August, it had been nearly five months since the cycling apparel manufacturer produced cycling apparel, but the events of 2020 only sharpened Inglis and her team.
“Before all of this happened, I thought we would grow one step at a time,” she said. “But, that pivot to PPE brought in so many skilled workers that it was actually like a springboard for us.”
With employees coming from Asheville, Morganton, Spindale and other communities throughout WNC, the return to cycling apparel brought unprecedented production. Kitsbow went from shipping 30 - 40 items per day to as many as 1,000. The company went from 10,000 customers to 30,000 over the course of its first year in the mountains. The product line has now expanded from the Icon shirt and a handful of merchandise to 25 pieces of technical cycling apparel, including shirts, jackets, vests and more.
“We now have a much more robust company that is able to ship to the huge number of customers we have,” Billstrom said. “We were forced to grow up fast, and right now we are where we planned to be, as a company, in 2022.”
Billstrom credits that ability to respond to a crisis to the leadership of longtime employees like Inglis and team members like Thompson, who joined after the pivot.
“I’ve learned almost 20 different products I can jump in and sew on any given day,” said Thompson, who is now a permanent employee and team leader in the knitwear section. “It’s really impressive how the pandemic flipped so many things upside down, but this company found a way to not only keep making products locally through everything, but also create jobs.”
Old Fort native Heath Cooper, the senior cutter for Kitsbow, was hired in 2019, when the company moved east from California. He credits the manufacturing company with “breathing fresh life” into his hometown. Photo by Fred McCormick
Kitsbow will continue making PPE well into the future, and is currently hiring to fill positions in its production facility and adjacent retail space, the Old Fort Ride House. The company’s momentum is strong as it looks to the future, and Billstrom believes that bodes well for the surrounding town.
Seeking to foster a “shared sense of purpose,” Kitsbow has partnered with nonprofit organization People on the Move for Old Fort, and a related group, the Old Fort Community Forum. People on the Move is a Black-led community initiative that provides local African American residents with a platform to express ideas, needs and concerns. The group recently raised $20,000 to fund a mural in the center of town that depicts a scene from a protest against school segregation held in Old Fort in the 1950s.
“As soon as I learned about what this organization was doing for the community, I was like ‘we’re in,’” Billstrom said. “This is an important organization for Kitsbow to support, and it’s important that we do it in a way that doesn’t take over, but follows the lead of People on the Move for Old Fort.”
Kitsbow is also supporting the efforts of the G5 Trail Collective, a nonprofit partnership focused on developing and maintaining the trails in the five counties that make up the Grandfather Ranger District of the Pisgah National Forest. The group recently received grants from People on the Move for Old Fort, the International Mountain Bicycling Association and Mill Creek Properties to design more than 30 miles of trails around the town.
“This will play a big part in Old Fort becoming a destination as a trail town,” Billstrom said. “Even before the pandemic we needed more trails, and now with everyone spending more time outdoors, they’re more important than ever.”
The company has “basically adopted” the Old Fort section of the Fonta Flora State Trail, which when completed will link Morganton to Asheville. It’s supporting the nonprofit organization, Friends of the Fonta Flora State Trail, which raises funding for the completion of the trail. The existing segment of the system currently connects to the G5 Trail Collective project.
“We’ve already painted an 18-foot tall trail sign on the side of our building,” Billstrom said. “This is another project that will be a big boost for Old Fort, and the surrounding area.”
While the first year of operation beneath the Pisgah National Forest has brought national attention to the company, it’s the local impact that gives Old Fort native Cooper tremendous pride in his employer.
“Kitsbow breathed fresh life into Old Fort,” Cooper said. “The old Ethan Allen plant had just shut down, and for a lot of us here it felt like we were seeing this town die, for lack of a better word. But now it’s becoming a tiny boomtown, and it’s great to be here to see it. I’ve been here all my life and never thought I’d see anything like this.”