The pandemic forced many manufacturers, including Unionwear, to pivot, adapt, and overcome their challenges quickly.

In Georgia, a sixth-generation manufacturer called Goldens’ Cast Iron started making exercise equipment because they noticed their competitors were sourcing cast iron overseas and fell behind.

“Our cookers were available …. where our competitors’ grills weren’t,” George Golden Boyd Jr., the company’s fifth-generation chairman and CEO, told ABC News. “So, they got the idea to start making other hard-to-find products, like dumbbells and kettlebells.

“Kettle bells were coming from China,” he added. “Now, the product wasn’t here. America couldn’t get kettlebells. All the team here was scrambling here to figure out how to make these things, and we did. We got tooling made, got them made, and that’s how Goldens’, [a] 138-year-old company at that point, became a startup during a pandemic.”

We admire their hustle.

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