CONE MILLS CORPORATION
3101 North Elm Street
Greensboro, NC 27408
Tel: (910) 379-6220
Fax: (910) 379-6240
URL: www.cone.com

Cone Mills is the world's largest producer of denim.  For 1996, Cone reported $746 million in sales, with denim representing approximately 67 percent of Cone's total sales worldwide. It is also the largest U.S. exporter of apparel fabrics and the largest commission printer of home furnishing fabrics in North America. Cone has nine manufacturing plants in the U.S. and a new joint venture facility in Mexico, started in 1996. In addition, Cone has marketing and styling operations in Brussels, a marketing office in Singapore and distribution facilities in several overseas locations.  CEO and President is Pat Danahy, who joined Cone Mills as a management trainee in 1971.

This prestigious denim manufacturer has long been a world leader in quality and innovative textile products.  Its history dates back to the last century when two brothers, Moses and Ceasar Cone, formed the Cone Export and Commission Company handling cotton goods in New York City.  Born in Tennessee and raised in Baltimore, the brothers had been salesmen for their father's wholesale grocery house, H. Cone and Sons, which was dissolved in 1890. Their experience with the family's Baltimore firm had thoroughly familiarized them with conditions and opportunities throughout the South.

With their own company in New York, the brothers wanted  to maintain closer contact with the mill owners in the South, so in 1893, Cone Export and Commission Company established a main office in Greensboro, N.C., a city which had the advantage of proximity to cotton fields, gins and warehouses and rails radiating in seven directions.

Soon, the brothers decided they wanted to manufacture denim and acquired several hundred acres outside of Greensboro, alongside the main line of the Southern Railway.  Here they erected the mills of the Proximity Manufacturing Company (named because of its nearness to the rail lines) in 1895 and 1896.  Proximity opened with 240 looms and within 10 years, the company built White Oak Mills nearby, which has become the largest denim manufacturing plant in the world.

Upon the death of Moses Cone in 1908, Ceasar Cone continued to chart new expansion for the company.  Under his leadership, Cone Mills quickly grew to account for one third of the world's production of denim.  He was the first man in the textile industry to realize that durable work clothes were an economic necessity.  To that end, Cone Denim has always been known for its durable, quality and color-fast products.  Today, Levi Strauss is its major customer, a relationship that dates back to 1905 during Cone's earliest days led by Moses and Ceasar Cone. CEO Danahy says this relationship typifies the "strong partnership" philosophy originated by the Cone brothers and continuing today.

The company continued to grow throughout the 20th century. In 1951, it went public and acquired 15 plants in the U.S. In 1952, Cone's denim for export was sold in Europe by a New York-based company. As fashion desire increased, Cone became known for other innovative products such as shirting fabrics and cotton corduroy.  By the early '90s, Cone had added sales agents in Europe, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Africa and throughout Latin America.   Danahy cites two major events as having the greatest impact on Cone in the recent past:  Cone's LBO  in 1984 and its buyback from the public in 1992.

In the '90s alone, Danahy has steered the company through new positioning as "The New Cone," which has included  selling four business units in 1996 and continuing to expand its product assortment with innovation and reliability and continuing its postioning as the world leader in authentic denim products. Today, Cone offers a full assortment of denim weights, hands and finishes, as well as newer products such as cotton/polyester space-dyed denims called "Cyberware," bleached denims, ringspun denims, left-hand twills and denims of clean, yarn dyed colors.  Cone's Textile products division makes denim, corduroy twills and shirtings. Shirtings include novelty fabrics, piece-dyed and yarn-dyed blends and flannels.  Cone has made denim for Giorgio Armani, Ralph Lauren and The Gap and plaid/chamois flannels for LL Bean and Woolrich.  In 1992 and 1993, ATMI honored Cone for encouraging environmental excellence.

In 1997, the company's d cube business unit introduced three new collections to their MONA CD-ROM library of textile designs. Two collections are from The Style Council, a leading New York design studio, and the third is from the DuFlon Collection, considered to be the world's pre-eminent Guatemalan textile collection.  The original MONA collections, called Classic Series, offer eight different sets of CD-ROM collections from the Textile Collection of The Museum at The Fashion Institute of Technology. The d cube businesss unit of Cone Mills was created to help companies improve productivity and reduce the time-to-market cycle by offering thousands of high-resolution designs for a cost of about $1 to $3 per image.
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