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Last week Joe McGarry and his staff had their hands full preparing to move into a massive new building. Almost everything was packed, but in the reception area still hung a framed Michelangelo print, the Hand of God giving life to Adam.
McGarry pointed at the two giant hands representing the creation process and joked, "Nice touch, huh?" "Yeah," I agreed, "but shouldn't you have drawn in some gloves?"
By his own designation, Joe McGarry is the planet's "glove guru." If he could rule this blue marble, there wouldn't be an ungloved hand in sight. From his buildings off Maynard Road in Cary, McGarry runs a pair of glove companies, Polygenex International Inc. and Gloves-Online.
Polygenex is the world's largest specialty knit glove manufacturer. Gloves-Online sells Polygenex gloves and imports and sells high-end fashion gloves - men's and women's lambskin and suede gloves, satin wedding and opera gloves and black and white cotton gloves. Its Web site http://www.gloves-online.com/ claims to be the world's largest glove resource. I found it during a quest for leather gloves in a peculiar shade of beige. They didn't have the color, but before I knew it, I was reading about the glove guru and and learning about the history and mystery of glove making from "Glove University."
Gloves aren't something most people spend time thinking about. But after I got a tour of McGarry's place, I can tell you, there's a lot more going on in this weird microcosm than you could count on five fingers.
Polygenex just celebrated its 10th anniversary. Gloves-Online appeared on the Internet in 1997 but did not start selling gloves until 1999. Business has been successful. Exactly how successful is hard to say, because McGarry's companies are privately held and traded. But the new building, which McGarry designed, is close to 40,000 square feet. And he's worried it's not big enough. He has 22 employees and shifts that work around the clock making gloves.
McGarry can look at a person's hand and tell her glove size. But the guru mostly notices what people do with their hands. Who might need gloves? It's never not on his mind.
"OK. For instance, I live in Preston, and I was coming to work and passed a traffic accident," he says. "A police officer was directing cars, but because of the sun, you couldn't see his hands. I thought, that officer needs gloves. Not just white gloves, but something brighter. Like Day-Glo. Not exactly a brilliant or unique idea, but I checked it out and nobody was making any. We had some bright orange dye, and so we made some."
Thus exists the "Tetra", which he showed me in the conference room. Lots of business folk have honors and awards on their credenzas. McGarry has a bunch of porcelain hands wearing gloves.
"That black one? That's a good one. I got a call from a casino on an Indian reservation. They wanted a black knit glove with their logo on it. The ladies like to wear them when they play the slot machines, so they don't get their fingers dirty from the quarters."
Down a hall from his office is the current manufacturing plant, filled with dozens of knitting machines and bins of white knit gloves as far as the eye can see. The only discernible difference is in a band of color at the wrist. But there are gloves with microdot PVC on the fingertips. Good for counting money, McGarry says. Anti-static gloves used by photographers and film developers. Gloves knit with an isothermal fiber, used for a certain kind of physical therapy.
When I ask how it works, he says, "Eleven herbs and spices."
We pawed through some bins, then McGarry summoned Robert Long, his research and development guru.
"Put on the Covex," he said.
They smiled the way boys do when they show off a cool toy. Long put on a mustard yellow colored glove, which looked a little like something your Aunt Irene might knit. Then the man fired up a blowtorch and waved it all over the glove.
"Withstands heat up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit," McGarry says.
Long pulled out a knife and hacked at his hand, but the fibers were impenetrable. McGarry has probably seen that demonstration a million times, but he still got enthusiastic. Gloves are his love.
Down South, the need for gloves is seldom, but the recent cold snap has brought in more requests. Still, 99.99 percent of business comes from outside North Carolina. But McGarry's experience is a quintessential Triangle success story. Our region is chock full of places like this and people like McGarry and his staff. Some smart guy who gets a little idea and turns it into big business.
The next thing you know, casinos are calling. Branches of the Armed Forces. The Library of Congress. The NFL. Even actresses, like June Lockhart.
"She heard about us and she likes to read the newspaper every day, but she doesn't want to get her hands dirty," McGarry says. "So once a year, we send her a shipment of white cotton gloves."
Actually, McGarry loves the odd requests. The weirder the better, as far as he's concerned. They stretch his imagination - and of course, the savings accounts. But he's also interested in finding great gloves from around the globe.
A small caged-off area houses the Gloves-Online inventory. Boxes hold the satin and embroidered, cotton gloves and the leather and suede. McGarry plans to expand after the move, adding children's gloves, more colors of leather gloves and high-end work gloves.
His ideas for new kinds of specialty gloves are endless, not that he wants to let out company secrets: monogrammed gloves, liners for ski gloves. He is only limited, he says, by his own creativity.
"We shall be to gloves," he vows, "what Amazon.com is to books."