Winthrop recalled a recent visit to Gaffney, South Carolina. The small town nestled off I-85 among rolling hills adorned with peach orchards was a hub of the South’s textile industry decades ago, back when Americans still wore American-made clothes.

These days, Gaffney is better known for its peaches (and as the hometown of Francis Underwood, the conniving congressman played by Kevin Spacey in Netflix’s House of Cards). But Winthrop says his favorite place in Gaffney is one nondescript building edged by an anonymous parking lot.

“You walk inside the walls of that place and it’s probably the most modern yarn facility in the world,” he says.

At that factory, he says about 250 highly trained, technically skilled workers are spinning Carolina cotton into yarn for fabric that the Northern California factory where we’re standing will transform into what has become one of the most desired articles of clothing in Silicon Valley and beyond.