The Kayser-Roth hosiery mill on Broadway Street in Dayton will close by the end of 2018. The nearly 200,000-square-foot textile mill has about 85 employees whose jobs will end with the shutdown, which company officials blamed on declining sales. / Photo by Dave FlessnerDAYTON – The oldest manufacturing business in Rhea County – and the last remaining textile mill in Dayton – will shut down by the end of the year.
Kayser-Roth Corp., plans to idle the last of its knitting and sewing machines here at the end of next month and cease all operations in December, ending a century-old business that began as the Dayton Hosiery Mill in 1913.
“It’s the end of an era, and I’m honored to have worked with such a good group of people here,” said Bob Wisener, the plant manager in Dayton who has worked at Kayser-Roth for the past 36 years and came to Dayton in 1989 after closing down another mill in Harriman, Tennessee. “Unfortunately, our orders have been decreasing over the past three to five years to the point where logistically it just makes sense to consolidate our operations elsewhere.”
The shut down will affect the last 85 employees of the Dayton mill, which in the 1980s at its peak had more than 500 employees when the company operated more than 400 knitting machines. The plant takes raw yarn and knits, sews, dyes the yarn into women’s hosiery sold under the the Calvin-Klein, Hue and No nonsense labels.
The Dayton mill, which includes nearly 200,000 square feet, was built in 1955 when the Chester H. Roth Co. purchased the Graysville Hosiery Mill on Main Street and relocated the Dayton facility.