Skip to content

Impact · Chapter 19, 1980–2005

The Kannapolis Collapse

When the world's best-known towel company closed in a single day.

Cannon Mills at Kannapolis, North Carolina, once the world's largest towel producer. Its successor Pillowtex closed the plant on July 30, 2003.
Cannon Mills at Kannapolis, North Carolina, once the world's largest towel producer. Its successor Pillowtex closed the plant on July 30, 2003.Tichnor Bros. for Dixie News Company, "Cannon Mills, Kannapolis, N.C.," postcard, c. 1930-1945. Boston Public Library, Tichnor Brothers Collection. Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

Cannon Manufacturing, founded by James W. Cannon in 1887, built Kannapolis from 1906 as a company town around its towel mills; for most of the twentieth century Cannon was among the world's largest makers of towels and sheets. The company passed through several owners and in 1997 was absorbed by Pillowtex. On July 30, 2003, Pillowtex, in its second bankruptcy, closed all sixteen of its plants and distribution centers and announced the loss of about 6,450 jobs company-wide—some accounts put the figure near 7,650—including roughly 4,800 in North Carolina and more than 4,000 in Kannapolis and surrounding Cabarrus and Rowan counties. It was the largest single layoff in the state's history. Workers qualified for federal Trade Adjustment Assistance and retraining, but many struggled to find comparable work. In 2004 the billionaire David Murdock bought the mill site, and the North Carolina Research Campus, a biotechnology and nutrition-science complex, rose on the ground where the main plant had stood.

Sources

  1. Primary sourcePillowtex press release, July 30, 2003 (Exhibit 99.2). U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, EDGAR, 2003.
  2. Government recordCommunity History. City of Kannapolis.
  3. Archive / museumNorth Carolina Research Campus timeline. NC State University Libraries Special Collections.
  4. ScholarshipThe Pillowtex closing and its aftermath (student research paper). University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Cite this page (Chicago)