FARMINGTON — The Franklin County Chamber of Commerce hosted a site tour of the Origin facility on High Street in Farmington.  There were approximately 25 people in attendance and all were very interested in what this local business had to share.

Origin has most recently released boots for retail sales and they have had an incredible response. Farmington is very fortunate to have forward-thinking business people in our midst, such as the leadership at Origin!  Pete Roberts is doing quite a stroke of business and has a vision for continued growth, all in Franklin County.

The tour was given by Jon Milan, who has been with the company since it started.   His tour went like this:

When you first come into the factory you enter through the pro-shop that shows finished products for sale manufactured by Origin. From the pro-shop you walk out onto the stitching floor which is broken into 4 sections. The first is the boot department where all our boots are made from start to finish. The second is our screen printing department where we have an pneumatic screen press. The next section is our fabric stitching lines where there are actually three lines. One line is gi jackets, one is gi pants and the final line is our denim line that stitches all our jeans. The final section on the stitching floor is the quality control department where all the finished products are inspected and packaged. We have a downstairs also that we call “The Bunker” and that is where we weave all our fabric on two looms. In the bunker we also cut all the fabric with either a knife or laser depending on the product. We have one automatic knife and two laser cutters. We also have embroidery and dye sublimation downstairs.

The background of how Pete and Jon found all of this machinery and equipment was fascinating.  Having a presence in a state that has historically been steeped in shoe manufacturing made this challenge a very interesting one, full of useful finds in mills that had long since been closed.  Putting these finds to good use is part of this local success story!  You can find out more about Origin on their website: www.originmaine.com .