The sewing machines are running again in Tylertown.
Brigade Manufacturing Inc. is leasing the former Magnolia Garment factory on Ostrover Drive and making uniforms for the military.
Brigade President Alton Spurlock said the company has 30 employees, and the long-term goal is to employ 250 to 300.
“We are gearing up to go after the military business,” Spurlock said. “The company was organized in December, and we started up about two weeks ago. We had four or five employees working then to get out rush jobs.”
The company is hiring workers, and people can apply either at the WIN Jobs Center on Marion Drive in McComb, or at the Brigade building.
Spurlock said the company has several employees hired under the Mississippi Department of Employment Security’s Subsidized Transition Employment Program & Services, or STEPS.
Funded by employment security and the Mississippi Department of Human Services, the program is designed to help laid-off workers move into a new job that requires retraining. The program pays 66 percent of an employee’s salary for six months.
Spurlock said the company decided to come to Tylertown because of the support and cooperation from city and county officials and the county’s economic development authority.
Pam Keaton, Walthall County economic development director, said the partners that eventually formed Brigade began planning the plant in mid-summer.
She attributes Brigade’s decision to locate in Tylertown to several factors.
One is a large labor force of experienced garment industry employees who were laid off when former garment manufacturer Wellstone closed, and who had worked for other garment plants before Wellstone.
Another factor was the availability of a building for the plant.
“The board of supervisors and the town worked together to put up a good package that was attractive enough to get Brigade to locate here,” Keaton said.
Although the company does not yet have any military contracts, Spurlock said Brigade is making uniforms for private companies that sell to the military and is working as a subcontractor for another company that has a military uniform contract.
He said the company is making a shirt with fire-resistant sleeves for the U.S. Army’s Special Forces, the army’s combat uniform and a new white dress uniform shirt for the army.
“We’re absolutely thrilled that we’re getting somebody like this and the number of employees that they will hire … I’m just ecstatic that Tylertown was able to land them,” said Jimmy Williams, Walthall County Economic Development chairman.
