Hurricane Helene floods the Fletcher manufacturing facility

Hurricane Helene reached Western North Carolina in late September 2024 and put forty-eight inches of water through the company’s manufacturing facility in Fletcher. The building was not in a flood plain.

The loss was total for the operation it housed. Production equipment representing tens of millions of dollars was destroyed or rendered unusable, and what was recovered later sold at auction for a small fraction of its value. The arrangement that had made the print business efficient, one production operation serving every storefront above it, concentrated the damage: a single facility failing took the whole stack with it.

The company has been consistent in describing the manufacturing operation as rebuilding rather than paused. The word is chosen deliberately, and the following two years of the record support it.