[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 159 (2013), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Page 5308]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     RECOGNIZING DARN TOUGH VERMONT

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, Vermont is known for many of its great 
businesses and products. Among those successful companies is Darn Tough 
Vermont, whose brand represents the commitment to quality and 
excellence that defines Vermont. For nearly a decade, Darn Tough 
Vermont has been making the type of quality products our Nation has 
grown to expect from Vermonters.
  Darn Tough was launched in 2004 by Ric Cabot, whose family founded 
Darn Tough's parent company in Vermont 35 years ago. For three 
generations, the Cabot family has stayed true to their roots and 
committed to the Northfield community. While other clothing 
manufacturers have outsourced their labor, the Cabots carry on where 
they began--manufacturing in New England, keeping faith with their 
customers and their 120 employees.
  Darn Tough has a local feel to those who visit its factory and know 
its operators, but the company's name brand is known across the country 
and around the world wherever people appreciate a high-quality wool 
hiking and athletic sock, and its products are even worn overseas by 
our troops in combat. And as with other Vermont companies that equip 
and outfit our military, taxpayers can rest assured our troops are in 
good hands when their feet are in quality goods made by Darn Tough.
  The Burlington Free Press recently paid tribute to Ric Cabot and all 
of the employees at Darn Tough for their hard work that continues to 
benefit our troops and the Vermont economy. I ask unanimous consent 
that a copy of the recent Free Press article entitled ``Rebuilding 
American textiles, one sock at a time: Darn Tough measures success,'' 
be printed into the Record.
  There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in 
the Record as follows:

               [From Burlington Free Press, Apr. 4, 2012]

 Rebuilding American Textiles, One Sock at a Time: Darn Tough Measures 
                                Success

                          (By Dan D'Ambrosio)

       In Northfield, about 50 miles north of White River Junction 
     where Ibex makes its home, Cabot Hosiery Mills, Inc. has been 
     making private label socks not only in America, but in 
     Vermont, since 1978. Third generation owner Ric Cabot, who 
     launched the company's own label--Darn Tough Vermont--in 
     2004, says one of the secrets to Darn Tough's success is the 
     deceptive difficulty of making a good sock.
       ``People think socks are easy to do, it's just a pair of 
     socks, how hard could it be?'' Cabot said. ``I guess that 
     allows people to come into the market, but the staying power 
     of companies that don't produce their own product is very 
     short. There are so many people that are doing it well, it's 
     hard to maintain a presence.''
       Perhaps the best symbol of Cabot's fastidiousness when it 
     comes to socks is the 18-inch ruler projecting incongruously 
     out of his back pocket when he greets visitors at the front 
     door of the plain metal building that houses Darn Tough.
       Cabot sat on the ruler and broke it about 20 years ago. He 
     had one of Cabot's maintenance workers glue it back together, 
     giving it the look of a broken bone that has healed well. 
     There are certain things, Cabot says, you don't want to 
     replace.
       Cabot is never without his ruler as he roams the knitting 
     floor and quality control departments of Darn Tough, handling 
     socks, and measuring them.
       ``I sweat quarter-inches,'' Cabot says. ``The first thing I 
     do when I pick up a sock, is it the right length? If a sock 
     is the right length, that means a lot of people are doing 
     their jobs.''
       Later, at a quality audit station, Cabot picks up a sock, a 
     men's large.
       ``Socks that made it this far, there's not going to be a 
     huge hole, or wrong color, but the sizing should be right,'' 
     he says. ``This should be at or on 10\3/4\ inches.''
       It's dead on. Socks, Cabot explains, are a math problem, 
     ``like most things in life.'' Among the numbers you have to 
     work out are the size and gauge of the needles used to knit 
     the socks. The gauge of the needle is basically how many 
     needles you can fit in a circumference, because socks are 
     knit in a circle.
       ``Those needles are in a cylinder,'' Cabot says. ``You have 
     to take into account needle size, cylinder size, what's the 
     right weight of wool, nylon and Lycra? How are you going to 
     reinforce it? How many stitches per inch? Where are you going 
     to put the terry, the cushioning?''
       Once you answer all of these many mathematical questions, 
     Cabot says, you have the ``DNA'' of a Darn Tough sock. Then 
     that DNA has to be expanded to hiking socks, running socks, 
     cycling socks. Every sock has more in common, mathematically, 
     than they don't have in common with other Darn Tough socks.
       ``That's the math of it, the durability story, the comfort 
     story, the fit story,'' Cabot said.
       But all those stories, he said, are trumped by another 
     story when it comes to marketing Darn Tough socks: The 
     Vermont story. Darn Tough employs about 120 people in 
     Northfield, maintaining the New England tradition of textiles 
     that once included hundreds of towns.
       ``You got to remind people, they know it, but you tell them 
     nobody ever outsourced anything for quality,'' Cabot said. 
     ``That's the key.''

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