Bossong rolls on with the times

ASHEBORO — Do some of your joints hurt? 
September is Pain Awareness Month and Bossong Medical in Asheboro and Textile Based Delivery, Inc. (dba Nufabrx) in Conover have been busy helping people get rid of shooting and burning pain. 
The companies have collaborated to make compression sleeves for ankles (good for Plantar fasciitis), legs, calves, knees, lower leg and wrists. 
The products, which are available in all 4,200 Walmarts and Target.com across the country, and soon to be in CVS and Walgreens, have been so popular that Nufabrx has landed the No. 1 spot in the Charlotte/Hickory/Asheboro Metro area on the INC. Magazine 5000 list this year for fastest growing companies with 6,700%+ growth.
Nufabrx also ranked in the top 1 percent nationally. That is a major accomplishment.
The story goes on. Few Asheboro people know it, but the team of Bossong Medical and Nufabrx packed 250,000 specialized masks into two Black Hawk helicopters, sent by the National Guard from Washington, D.C. The choppers and convoy of transportation vehicles landed in Asheboro in May 2020.
          
The companies
Nufabrx is based at the Manufacturing Solutions Center (MSC) in Conover, just east of Hickory in Catawba County. The high-tech research and development laboratory does the prototyping and provides a third-party testing lab for many products. It’s like a 007 laboratory on steroids. It works with Fortune 500 companies worldwide — and with companies in Randolph County.
Nufabrx built a building inside of Bossong Medical to house proprietary equipment used to make the fabric.
In Asheboro, Bossong Medical does the ISO 13485 manufacturing for Nufabrx, which includes making the fabric, cutting and sewing the products, packaging and shipping them out. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) standards enable manufacturers to continually measure, evaluate and improve the systems that ensure product quality and reliability.
Bossong has two divisions: Hosiery and medical. The medical unit works closely with Nufabrx.
Donnie White, who once worked in R&D (research and development) at Acme-McCrary, connected Jordan Schindler, owner of Textile Based Delivery, with Chris Yow, vice-president of sales for Bossong Medical together. He knew that Bossong had some of the equipment Nufabrx needed.
Kevin Franklin, president of the Randolph Co. Economic Development Corp., said, “Here at the EDC, we were delighted to see Jordan Schindler’s Textile Based Delivery (Nufabrx) land at #50 on the 2021 Inc. 5000 list. Although the company is based in Conover, the Nufabrx Innovation Center is housed in Asheboro at the Bossong Hosiery facility which serves as the manufacturing partner for Nufabrx. 
“It’s exciting to see the collaboration between Bossong, a nearly 100-year-old legacy textile mill, and Nufabrx, an innovative, young, high-growth company. Theirs is a perfect marriage of technical textile manufacturing know-how and 21st century science, which is good for Bossong, good for Nufabrx, good for the future of textiles and good for Asheboro.”
 
The pillowcase
The story goes back to a pillow case. 
When Schindler was in college, the material in his pillow case gave him a bad case of acne. His dermatologist told him he needed to wash his pillowcase two-to-three times a week, a major challenge for a college kid. But that was the impetus for his efforts to create a new pillowcase, one embedded with tea tree oil and lavender that releases while you sleep. 
One thing led to another and now his medicated garments provide all day relief for achy muscles and joints due to pulled muscles, spasms, sprains, strains, swelling and more.
Schindler was making his pain-relieving products when COVID-19 hit. He pivoted and made close to 3 million masks infused with anti-microbial copper and skin-softening shea butter which were requested by the National Guard for first responders.
When the mask market became saturated, the two companies went back to making pain-relieving items.
Bossong makes Skineez compression socks that are infused with shea butter. They can be purchased at Walmart.
 
Employee relationships
Like so many local companies, Bossong and Nufabrx have had to hire employees. Recently, Schindler hired 30. “We need an HR department now,” he laughed. It had grown from less than a handful of technologically-oriented employees.
Lonnie Caulder, vice-president of R&D for knitting, moved to Asheboro in 1983.
“I love working at Bossong,” he said. “We have a close working relationship with co-workers and friends. And the company has bent over backwards to help the employees.” He explained that throughout the years, company owners have absorbed many costs that employees would have had to pay, such as medical.
He explained that Walmart wants vendors to meet certain financial criteria, which cuts into profit. So the efforts that the Bossong leadership has made have kept the company strong and still hiring employees.
Caulder said Bossong still needs to hire employees, but they like to share what kind of work they do. It’s not every day you see Black Hawk helicopters landing at your place of work to get loaded up with items to help those in need.