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By Colleen Schreiber MURRELLS INLET, S.C. — When Richard Whitlock started in the wool business back in 1955, stick whittling was an art a wool buyer had to master if he ever expected to get much wool bought. Whitlock became a pretty good stick whittler. Whitlock and Jim Elliot, of R.C. Elliot & Co. of Salt Lake City, are about the only two wool buyers left in the business from the old school where every trade was done private treaty, one on one, with the grower at the shearing pens, sitting on a bag of wool while shearing was in progress. "The buyers would use their personality and dicker back and forth with the grower and whittle the stick," Whitlock explains. "Wool sales didn’t get started until we got a few buyers who couldn’t do the stick whittling, and they talked the grower into going to sales, but that didn’t happen for quite a few years after I moved west." The buyers handled the fleeces at the shearing pens as they were coming off the sheep. They would use their hands to keep track of the different grades so they could come up with an overall percentage for that particular clip. The categories were fine, 62, 60s, 58s, and coarser, and the buyer would make a mark on the finger corresponding to which category a particular fleece fit in. After handling 100 fleeces, they’d figure a percentage of the various categories for the overall clip. They’d go back the next day and do the same thing all over again and come up with a price for that clip. "I knew about six buyers who did it that way," Whitlock says. "Those who come to mind are Jay Myers, Bob Elliot, and Paul Finnegan." There was little laboratory testing in those days, and when testing first started, Whitlock remembers a couple of the old-school wool buyers commenting that it would surely be the death of the industry. "It of course has nothing to do with anything relating to today’s situation, but it was a good story," Whitlock says. "I never had a problem with testing," he adds. "If a lab didn’t agree with me, the lab was wrong." The competition was stout, he says, and at times it was a cutthroat business, but after business was finished, they were a tight-knit group of men. "Every buyer would try to figure out what the competition had been telling the grower," he recalls. "It was a game, but a game backed with money." His Boston office would send a telegraph to its buyers telling them at what price to buy wool. They had a code for the different grades and the money they were willing to pay for the various grades. The limits, Whitlock says, were always issued on a clean basis. The buyers would take those limits, figure the yield and the freight, and come up with a grease price. There were two or three buyers at every shearing pen representing the various firms. "There was so much wool to buy back then that I didn’t try to buy any one particular clip. I would just try to get out and buy every one I could." From the time he started as a buyer out west until about 1972, Whitlock traveled about 160 nights out of the year, easily putting 40,000 to 50,000 miles a year on his car. "Every day it didn’t rain we followed the shearers. I’d go to seven shearing pens a day. Now, with the reduction in sheep numbers, I could probably look at all the wool in that same area in five or six days." The average size of a clip back then, he figures, was 45,000, maybe 50,000 pounds. "In those days we bought wool a boxcar-load at a time." He remembers one year in the early 1970s when he went out to Miles City, Montana in July and didn’t leave there until after Labor Day. "I was shipping five days a week. Quick as I got it bought, we loaded it up," he recalls. Whitlock grew up in Lake City, South Carolina, during the time when the textile industry was booming. Whitlock’s father did a little of everything to keep his family fed during those days. He drove a bread truck, ran a liquor store, was a bootlegger, and ran a laundry. Whitlock figures it was the latter that first sparked his interest in the textile business. He majored in textiles at Clemson University, where he learned about general textile manufacturing practices including carding, combing, spinning and fabric design. Upon completion of his degree, he went to work for Jack Wellman of Nichols and Company, which later became Wellman Combing Company. He started in their combing plant at Johnsonville, South Carolina. At that time, Whitlock says, Nichols was processing some 30 million pounds of top annually between its four plants. Most plants were operating full-out, running three shifts seven days a week. His first job was passing the wool up to the graders. In those days the fleeces were all tied. Whitlock would open the bag, cut the strings and throw the fleece on the table. They had eight tables for sorting. Most of the sorters were women. They would sort off the bellies, the pieces and the tags, which would later be baled. The two graders on each shift would grade the wool into five or six different category grades. Whitlock eventually worked his way up to the sorting table and then to grading. He worked at the combing plant for about six months before he was called away to the Army, but he came back in 1957 after completing his duty. Nichols/Wellman was just starting their first buying organization out west, and Whitlock was offered an opportunity to be part of that team. Being single, he jumped at the chance. For the first five years after his return, Whitlock spent the off season in the wool room, grading and sorting. During the spring he would go west for the shearing season. Back then it was a six to seven-month season. Whitlock followed the buyers and was responsible for shipping the wool and paying the growers. He did that from 1957 to 1962, and then he had an opportunity to move to Salt Lake City and become a buyer for Wellman. He shared an office with Jack Stressenger and Hank Willey. Willey started in the wool business in 1918. He worked for the railroad, but he was strictly responsible for shipping the wool back east that had been bought by all the Boston wool dealers. Willey went to work for Nichols when he was 66 years old. When Jack Stressenger started in the business, he worked for Howell, Jones and McDonald, a Boston wool dealer. Whitlock says just about every pound of wool that Stressenger bought for this Boston wool dealer went to Nichols. When Nichols made the decision to put a buying team together, they hired Stressenger to head it up. He in turn hired Willey. Whitlock traveled a great deal with these two men during those first few years. They became his mentors. From them he learned how to judge wool and how to relate to the rancher. Their golden rule was to be honest and straightforward with the grower and never, ever throw them a curve. During those years, Wellman/Nichols had 12 buyers scattered out across the country. There were two in Texas, two in the Midwest, and the rest worked out of Salt Lake City. Dick Boutin, Bob Woodbury and Jess McDonald all started the same time Whitlock did. Boutin was in Texas; Woodberry was in Colorado and Jess McDonald was one of the Midwestern buyers. In those early years, Whitlock says, the Salt Lake City office alone was buying 32 to 35 million pounds annually. Whitlock would start out in Arizona in January. He’d spend four or five weeks there. In late February he’d go to Montrose, Colorado, for about six weeks, and from there to Grand Junction for another six weeks. He worked his way back to Salt Lake City with buying stops in Wyoming and Montana. Some of his toughest competition, Whitlock recalls, was from Jim Elliott with R.C. Elliot & Co. and Scott Smith, a buyer for Provoust, which is now Chargeurs. Over time, buyers would develop a relationship with different growers. Draper Wool, another Boston firm, basically had control of Craig, Colorado. "Mr. Joe Malone would come west and move into the hotel in Craig and spend three months there doing nothing but buying wool," Whitlock recalls. One of the families with whom Whitlock became acquainted was the Emment Elizondo family of the Grand Junction and Montrose areas. They ran about 17,000 or so sheep early on. "It took quite a few years to gain Elizondo’s confidence, but when I did, he stayed with me. "There were other growers that other buyers developed a loyalty with, but you would still go out and visit with them and look at their wool, because you never knew. You never gave up." Other loyal customers who have stuck with Whitlock all these years are Wyoming ranchers Pete Arambal, Truman Julian and Jim Magagna. "I never met a rancher I couldn’t like," Whitlock says. "The sheepmen are the greatest people to deal with. Lawyers and bankers can’t understand why we don’t have contracts. I’ve been in this business since 1957, and I’ve never written a contract. A handshake has always been my contract." During those days, Wellman sold every pound of wool to domestic customers. J.P. Stevens was a big buyer for 62s top, Whitlock says. They were good for maybe 20 million pounds of top a year. Burlington was another big top buyer. But things began to change in the early 1970s. Synthetics were just beginning to come onto the scene in a big way. In 1972, wool prices were low, and greasy wool wasn’t moving at all. Mariner and Company, a topmaker, decided to try exporting grease wool. "Charlie Chase was with them at that time," Whitlock recalls. "They were about the first to my knowledge to ever export grease wool." Wellman followed suit, first exporting raw wool and then soon after top. The latter was to be the beginning of their downfall. "Wellman made a deal to sell five million pounds of top to spinners in Germany at 92 cents a top pound delivered Germany," Whitlock recalls. "Other companies did the same thing, and in 1972 it turned into a race to get the wool bought. "We had to buy the wool around 35 to 40 cents clean, so we were paying 10 to 12 to 15 cents for the wool," he notes. "The last clip that Wellman bought to cover that sale was bought by Milt Heins in California. Milt paid $3.25 clean to go against the 92-cent top. After that sale, Wellman said that was it. They were getting out." To their credit, Whitlock says, Wellman made delivery on every contracted pound. The company had gradually been decreasing its buying force, and in 1973 Dick Boutin, Jesse McDonald and Whitlock were the last three to "graduate." Whitlock then took a job with Draper Wool, buying wool for various mills on a commission basis. He did that from 1973 until 1977, when he decided to start his own order buying business. He bought primarily for J.P. Stevens, Burlington, and then a year or so later for Wellman. "I built a pretty good little business," Whitlock admits. "In 1978 Wellman decided they wanted to get back into selling top, so I made a deal with them to buy the wool. They processed it and sold it in their name, but it was my top." He did that for about three years, and then due to changes in Wellman’s business, Whitlock’s brother Beau and a couple of other investors bought the old J.P. Stevens combing plant in Allendale, South Carolina. Whitlock took his combing business there, and that’s when he and his brother started OneUp Enterprises, which Whitlock still operates today. Beau Whitlock died of cancer in 1992. Whitlock continued his commission buying for the other mills for a time and continued making top, but eventually the business evolved to where he was strictly buying wool for his own use to make into top. Today he processes and sells 90 percent of the wool he buys, either as scoured wool or top. All of his scoured business goes to Bollman in San Angelo, and he does commission combing now with Chargeurs at their Jamestown, South Carolina plant. His topmaking business has evolved into other areas as well. At his warehouse in Lake City, Whitlock has a cutting operation where he cuts the wool slivers into various lengths for some of his cotton system spinners. He also recently put in a lanolin business at the warehouse facility, but that business is progressing slowly. Whitlock uses 98 percent American wool; the remaining two percent is New Zealand wool. "I prefer American wool," Whitlock says, "though supply is a big worry. I could use some fleece 54s right now, but they’re sold up until July and August. In the future I might be forced to use South American wools to take up the slack." Unlike many in the wool business, the majority of his customers are still in the U.S., though today most of the wool goes into industrial uses rather than for apparel. The wool industry has changed tremendously since Whitlock first started in the business. He’s watched the number of topmaking companies in the Northeast and Southeast go from dozens down to basically one. The same is the case with the fabric makers. He’s watched the domestic clip, which was at about 400 million pounds in the late 1950s, dwindle down to just under 40 million pounds. "There’s not enough wool to support all the wool buyers out there right now," Whitlock comments. "That’s why I had to diversify. It’s awfully tough to make a living off buying raw wool alone." Having too many wool buyers, he points out, favors the grower. "From a grower’s viewpoint, we need every one of them. It’s a good market for the sheepman right now, and that’s a good thing, because without them I don’t have a job." In terms of processing, he looks to Chargeurs to continue to hold out as the last domestic combing mill. "We badly need a combing plant here in this country," he says. Whitlock points out that Europe is heading down the same path the U.S. has taken. "Right now they’re moving the combing plants out of Germany and France into Eastern Europe because it’s cheaper, and they’re getting hurt in Italy by the Chinese fabric. The reality is that all textile manufacturing will end up in the most undeveloped countries where there is cheap labor." Whitlock says it hasn’t been hard for him to adapt to change and diversify into other enterprises because he had experience in both ends of the business. It has been hard, though, to watch an industry die. Today Whitlock says he’s more or less a niche supplier, even though his business accounts for about 10 percent of the domestic clip. "I produce about half a million pounds of top and maybe a million pounds of scoured wool. I’m very small, but I’m a player." Nonetheless, it’s a far cry from, say, 1974, when he bought nine million pounds in one season. Whitlock goes to few shearing barns now. He goes out to the Imperial Valley for what little lamb wool is there, and then over to Arizona and to Wyoming for a short time. "It’s impossible to follow the shearing today the way I once did. If you’re going to purchase and ship direct from the country, you have to do it in truckload lots, and the flocks today are so small that it makes it impossible to do." He’s hopeful that sheep numbers have stabilized a bit. "I don’t think we’ll see the drastic drop in numbers like we’ve seen these last several years. The losses will come now from the younger generation who don’t want to stay in the business." Whitlock and his wife, Kelly, moved from Salt Lake City back to South Carolina where Whitlock grew up in 2000. He hasn’t retired, though. In fact, he says he plans never to quit buying wool. He is able to do a little more relaxing, though, now that he’s not on the road 160 days out of the year. He does some golfing, still enjoys traveling, but he particularly likes boating the intercoastal waterways from Maine down through Florida. Though the art of stick whittling has gone the way of the country wool trade, the other skills necessary for being a good wool buyer are still basically the same, Whitlock says. "This business requires patience. You have to know when to hold them and when to fold them. You’re going to win some and lose some. You can’t win them all. I wish I could." |
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