Page 14 - Bearproof 2021

OUR STORY
OUR STORY

Back in the late 1940s, AC Woody was
a shipping clerk at a Newton, North
Carolina sock manufacturing plant
called Catawba Valley Finishing.

One day management sent out the
word that the whole place was going
to shut down in two weeks and AC
didn’t like that idea. He went to the
owners and offered, if they would
finance his plan, to buy the whole
place himself.
DISCLAIMER: These socks will not actually keep bears from eating you.
They said okay, and within six months They are very strong and will outlast any “tough” sock on the market under
Mr. Woody had mortgaged everything all extreme elements, but if you go out among bears and disturb them or
he owned to buy the company. invite them to you or try to pet them, you are on your own.
“Bearproof” is the trade name. It’s not the invitation to try them out on bears.
Ol’ AC ran the place for nearly sixty
years until he died in 2005, and then his daughter, Ranae picked it up and ran the company, successfully
making socks until the 100-Year Flood of 2013 and the Chinese wiped her clean out of energy. With
more and more American sock factories heading overseas, eight and a half feet of water in the factory
with no insurance drowned, not only all of the sewing machines, but Ranae’s single-minded determina-
tion to compete any more against cheap, foreign labor.

So, her son Alton took it over. He’d worked for his mom for the last seven years, he knew what to do.
This was the family business, the one he had grown up in, and Alton was bear proof. He was young and
energetic. He was the kind of guy who knew how to build and fix anything that needed it, and his
family’s business was a home-grown challenge rising in his blood. So like his mom and grandpa before
him, he took the place on. And he bought insurance.

Like ol AC, Alton threw everything he had into rebuilding and it took him three years to get the factory
repaired and re-opened. He’d watched the bulk-manufacturing part of the business die as he was
rebuilding, so he sold off one building of the plant and re-opened as Custom Socks, Ink, focusing on
American-made custom socks, made right, made to last, made for the people who knew what they
wanted.

One afternoon, messing around with some wool, Alton came up with his own, personal custom sock – a
sock that would “stand up by itself.” He was from North Carolina. He was a worker, he went hiking
around the mountains, he knew what he wanted in a work sock, he wanted something serious. And so he
made himself a pair and he tried them out (on himself – not on a bear.) But he knew they’d withstand
just about anything, the same way Custom Socks Ink, born Catawba Valley Finishing had withstood a
whole lot of changes that had tried to take it out.

And that’s where BearProof socks came from.

You try to take them out, they’ll kick your ass and come back, which is why they have a life-time warranty
on them, just like the company that makes them.

BEARPROOFAPPAREL.COM CUSTOMERSEVICE@BEARPROOFAPPAREL.COM 828-695-9869
828-695-9869
CUSTOMERSEVICE@BEARPROOFAPPAREL.COM
BEARPROOFAPPAREL.COM