Our Culture

Our values are simple. We take pride in our work, in the quality of our products, and the fact that they’re made in the USA. Our traditions include our strong commitment to community outreach, giving back to those in need, and our dedication to making products that help others. We work hard, celebrate successes and joyous life events, and survive and endure during times of challenge. In everything we do, we strive to lift people to new levels—our customers, our community, our providers, and ourselves.

Lifting Us All to New Levels

Community Outreach

Knit-Rite has a long tradition of playing a role in our local community and giving back to those in need. Cross-Lines Community Outreach is one such organization. Located right around the corner from Knit-Rite’s facilities, Cross-Lines is a community organization that works to help people in the Kansas City area that are affected by poverty. The organization helps people with basic needs, as well as tools to getting back on their feet.
Throughout our partnership with Cross-Lines, Knit-Rite has participated in a variety of activities, including volunteering to cook and serve meals during lunch shifts. Each year, Knit-Rite holds several internal fundraisers to raise money for the Cross-Lines Christmas store, that allows those in need to shop for Christmas gifts for their families from donated items. Each of these events contributes to our culture by allowing employees a pause in their day-to-day with moments of fun, camaraderie, and competition, while experiencing the joy of helping less fortunate members of our local community.
Steps of Faith is another beneficiary of Knit-Rite’s outreach. Steps of Faith is an organization that provides prosthetic limbs to amputees who cannot otherwise afford them. Prosthetic limbs can be very costly, especially to amputees who don’t have insurance. As any amputee knows well, prosthetic limbs are not a luxury item, but actually the tool that makes a difference in giving amputees the ability to live independently and to complete tasks that an able-bodied person may take for granted.
The spring of 2020 was a terrifying time for everyone the world over. The unknowns included a novel and deadly illness, coupled with keeping the global economy afloat during shutdowns experienced across the globe. Knit-Rite was no different. When orders slowed to a stall, machines began to shut down, and employees headed home with an uncertain future, one thing that didn’t stop flowing was our ingenuity.
Identifying one worldwide problem that we could actually help solve—the shortage of PPE supplies for healthcare workers and a virtual non-existence of protective masks for the general public—Knit-Rite team members began to determine how we could help. The Research and Development team designed protective, non-medical face masks from materials typically used in our everyday products, and reprogrammed knitting machines to start production. A few weeks after the global shutdown began, Knit-Rite’s protective face mask was being sold online across the country.
Staying true to our values, Knit-Rite also donated hundreds of protective face masks to organizations serving vulnerable members of our community.
Although, Covid-19 is still a part of our lives, the threat of serious illness has subsided to manageable levels, and the world has begun to return to the life we once knew. Knit-Rite weathered the storm, coming out of the pandemic in a strong and healthy position, largely due to solid leadership, quick thinking, and the innovation that has sustained us throughout the last century.

Employee Events

Each year on the first Friday in October, U.S. Manufacturing is recognized around the country for its importance to the U.S. economy. Manufacturing had been king in the U.S. throughout most of the 20th century. But, changes in economic policy and a rise in foreign production lead to the shuttering of many U.S. manufacturing facilities throughout the 1980s and 90s. In 2012, with renewed interest in the importance of revitalizing manufacturing in this country, the Fabricators and Manufacturers’ Association (FMA) organized U.S. Manufacturing Day to educate the public, especially America’s students, and to celebrate a rebirth of manufacturing in this country.
At Knit-Rite, it has become tradition among employees that U.S. Manufacturing Day is celebrated with breakfast. Each year on that day, employees come together for a moment of celebration and company-wide event.
Few companies feel like a family in the way Knit-Rite does. The biggest reason for this is that Knit-Rite goes a long way to recognizing and appreciating the importance of each team member. Like every family, Knit-Rite celebrates our accomplishments at a “family meal”. Each quarter, team members gather together to share a meal and recognize employees who reached milestone anniversaries.

Generations at Knit-Rite

When Customer Service Representative, Leonida Ladines, gets a call from Inside Sales Rep, Laurie Newman, there might be a quick question about who’s bringing the mashed potatoes for next Thanksgiving, along with help with an order for one of Laurie’s customers. That’s because Leonida and Laurie are sisters. The two women have worked at Knit-Rite for more than 20 years each. Beyond that, Laurie and Leonida feel like they’ve actually grown up at Knit-Rite. Their father Dionisio Ladines came to work at Knit-Rite in the mid-1980s when the family immigrated to the United States from the Philippines. Dionisio already had some family members working at Knit-Rite. As Laurie, Leonida and their younger sister Lourdes each grew up, they came to Knit-Rite, along with their mother, Gloria, a talented seamstress.

Customer Service Representative, Sophia Turner has lunch with her mother and brother several days a week. Her mother Maria Serrano is the Production Processing Manager, and her brother Jonathan Flores, is a machine operator. Sophia remembers coming to work with her mom on Take Your Child to Work Day.

“Now I work with her,” she said. “It’s pretty neat and funny how things work out. Most people that have been here for a while have known me as a child and it sometimes really does feel like a ‘family’ because of it.”

Steve King and Skip Slaughter are two friends who have been working together filling orders in the warehouse for decades—27 and 25 years respectively. The friendly duo is known company-wide for their hard-working nature and their unique blend of humor.

Today Jennifer Roberts is the Director of Manufacturing for Knit-Rite. Her knowledge of Knit-Rite’s machines, processes, and materials knows no bounds. Today’s knitting machines are sophisticated and require knowledge in programming. But, the earliest knitting machines that Knit-Rite used were rudimentary. That’s what Jennifer used to learn to knit. You might think that Jennifer would be retired by now considering she learned on Knit-Rite’s historical 100+-year-old machine, but she’s actually quite young still. She learned her craft from the ground up, learning and understanding the finery and basics of the skill and applying that to her work managing newer, sleeker, and significantly faster knitting machines.

The common thread that knits each of these pieces together into one Knit-Rite culture is the joy each team member feels in working together to change lives. Whether it’s giving back to someone in need of a meal or a new prosthetic leg, sharing a meal and a conversation with fellow co-workers or in our regular work of producing medical textiles, each of our days at Knit-Rite is spent improving lives and lifting people to new levels.