Member Spotlight

A-B Emblem - 2025 Small Business of the Year

Business North Carolina magazine has named A-B Emblem as one of three 2025 Small Businesses of the Year. Conrad Industries, doing business as A-B Emblem, has been a member of WCI for several decades. They employ 92 employees in Weaverville, and we congratulate them on their stand-out success!

Here are some excerpts from the magazine's reporting:

Co-CEO Andrew Nagle discussed the days after Hurricane Helene, when the patch-making business, whose biggest customers are the U.S. military and NASA, had to close for six days, and went without water much longer. Managers Sandy Hensley and Pam Worley, and his wife and business co-owner Lisbeth Conrad Nagle, spent six hours outside a grocery store, the only location in town with Wi-Fi after Helene, so they could administer payroll checks to A-B Emblem's employees.

For days, another employee drove an ATV every hour to Nagle’s home to gather 50 gallons of water for the plant so that workers could flush toilets. Workers were paid the week they didn’t work but also needed to return to work so they could continue to care for their families.

"We did the right thing," Nagle said, "because that’s what family businesses do."

About 95% of A-B Emblem’s output at its Buncombe County plant involves making embroidered patches and other insignia for the armed forces. Over the last 10 years, A-B Emblem has fulfilled about $11 million worth of Department of Defense contracts. Last year, it made about 2 million patches for the U.S. armed forces, says Nagle. The company’s other high-profile client, NASA, has been a customer since 1963, when A-B Emblem manufactured the space agency’s iconic “meatball” logo patch.

Henry Conrad founded the business in 1941 near the Hudson River in West New York, New Jersey. He moved the company in 1963 to a small hill in Weaverville, a town of fewer than 5,000 residents about 10 miles north of Asheville. Nagle is married to Henry Conrad’s granddaughter, Lisbeth, and has been with the company since 1991. At 84, Bernie Conrad (the founder's son) still serves as a consultant for the family business. Nagle and Bernie’s son, Paul Conrad, have been co-CEOs since 2017. Lisbeth rejoined the company about five years ago, and several third-generation members also work there.

Its other operations, consisting of a plant in Mexico that opened in 1996 and another in China that launched in 2005...employ about 100 workers each and act as separate businesses. Patches made for state and local public safety groups, associations and private sector companies make up about 70% of the business, with work for the U.S. government accounting for the balance.