Do you know this man? Probably not. He might look like a politician, but in reality his name is Louis Hornick the 3rd, former leader of Louis Hornick and Co Fabrics and Curtains, and today I’d like to tell you all about a rabbit hole I went down looking for him.
It all started at my grandmother’s house, see above one of her windows in the kitchen lies this window décor – a pretty lace furnishing bearing the word “1988 Louis Hornick + co, Pat. Pending”. Seeing random names on products always interests me for some reason, maybe it’s just that it gives me an easy thing to look up. Regardless, I decided I wanted to find out as much as I could about this guy. Finding him and his company was pretty easy, in 2015 the Penn gazette released an article discussing Louis Hornick and Co’s history and recent events. This was actually where I found out a lot of the basics behind this “case” (I suppose you could call it that).
The Curtain
For starters, a bit of history. In 1918, a man named Louis Hornick started a textile company specializing in curtains out of Manhattan, New York. At the time, this was an import company, getting its shipments from England. However, in 1948, Morton Hornick changed this by founding a factory in Haverstraw, New York. This factory operated until 2008 when the housing crisis and the economic recession that it brought with it forced the new head of the company, Louis Hornick the 2nd, to move the factory overseas for cheaper labor in China. This was a pretty devastating blow for Ol’ Louis 2.0. In fact, in another interview I tracked down by Home Textiles, when asked what he would do differently, he said he wish he had fired more people (and said that nobody should think of him as a nice guy), which I thought was kind of funny, but also made me nervous for this phone call I wanted to make to him. Regardless, in 2013, Louis Hornick Co. was offered a deal with Walmart, and with this money Louis Hornick the 2nd once again aspired to bring his factory back to the states, and him and his son Louis “Tripp” Hornick the 3rd claimed that they were building a 100000 sq ft factory right in Allensdale county South Carolina. Since the paper I mentioned claimed that the factory was being built in Allendale County South Carolina, I figured it would be an easy thing to find the factory and learn a bit about it before contacting Louis 2.0, oh how wrong I was.
My first hint this would be harder than I thought should have been the lack of recent news, in fact, I couldn’t find ANY news about the company after this 2015 article, nothing even from the local allensdale town paper (trust me I looked). I searched the internet for ANY trace of where Louis Hornick and Co could be, their company profiles on linked in, both the pre-2008 Louis Hornick and Co AND their NEW page LHSC (Louis Hornick South Carolina), neither led me to any information other than a website. Doubly, when I checked the website, I realized it was down! Upon checking the wayback machine, it hadn’t been up since 2019!! I then went to the South Carolina BBB (Better Business Bureo) government website and confirmed at least that they did file a license for business in SC in 2013, but that was it. This did not bode well…. The only evidence I could find of this damn company’s existence post 2015 was a glassdoor review from 2021 saying that they used to work there some years ago… So fine I said, I don’t need an address for this factory, I will track it down myself. I opened up google maps and began my search.
Map of Allensdale SC
Luckily, Allensdale only has 3 major roads that run through each of the 3 major towns, this meant I could simply walk myself down each road until I found a factory, google it, and find out if it was the Louis Hornick and Co Factory! And so I did, enlisting the help of my sibling. Despite spending over an hour walking down as many major roads as we could find, we failed to identify any relevant factories, a crushing blow, perhaps they had simply failed to finish the factory, what a disappointing end. To make sure, however, I called the Allensdale county secretary, who, while very nice, also had no knowledge of any Louis Hornick factories in the area.
It was at this point I almost gave up, but I made one last google search…. And there, from 2013, was an article from the post and courier 2013 claiming that the factory had been built along the savannah river, between Hilton head island and Aiken town. This was it, a location along a river between two locations, and confirmation that the factory had been built at least in 2016. One problem, that river was massive, and the tract of land to search was far too big for even me and my sibling to search ourselves. So, my sibling coded a small tool that scraped metadata from maps, and used it to search for buildings tagged factory within this region, and presto… we had over 10 hits. We further narrowed it down to just textile factories for a final number of 3 factories. If this supposed factory had been built, it would be one of these 3. Only one problem, none of these factories were owned by LHSC. Despite that, we moved forward with these 3 hits, but how to tell if any of them were formerly owned by a company?
Map of the Savannah river where we would have to search.
Well, we could narrow it down by name first. Achroma (the first factory) was built by them, and traceable by newspaper, so we could cut that one out. The final two were right next to one another, owned by Orca Textiles. inc. When googling these two addresses, one of them stood out, it had gone for sale in 2019. Additionally, it was listed as being a 10000 sq ft factory expandable up to 100000 sq ft depending on needs. This matched everything I had been looking for in description when cross referencing with the other paper. The only problem was the location, how could I PROVE this was the factory I sought. To answer this, my sibling found a gold mine. On an archived page of the South Carolina Govt website we found a web tool called https://williamsburgsc.wthgis.com/ which tracks and details land ownership and taxation records for all plots of land in South Carolina. When we plugged in the address - 77 Commerce Drive, Kingstree, SC 29556 – we found what we were looking for. In 2013 the land was bought by LHSC and sold back to the town in 2022. This was the factory we wanted.
Record of sale!
The fabled factory.
Finally, to tie up some loose ends, looking back on the govt website we discovered that LHSC had dissolved their SC business license in 2019, and dissolved their contract with SC in 2022, matching up with the website going down in 2019 as well as when the factory went for sale. I did make the call to the new York head quarters but the number now belonged to a company called Crown Limited, which I think sums it up best. Louis Hornick and Co, strong competitor in the textile space from 1918 to 2022, almost making it 4 generations in the family. Thanks for the journey, old friend.
Thank you all for reading this long story, I know its likely not very thrilling, but I hope you found it somewhat interesting at least, it was a lot of work for me to track all this down haha. Have a good day, and keep on keeping on.
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