Allens Retire from Star Dress Company

Couple Has Worked There For Over 40 Years

AMELIA – A retirement luncheon was held for George and Sandra Allen on April 27 at the Star Dress Company in Amelia.  The couple has worked for the company for over 40 years, moving from place to place as the job required.

George Allen started working in 1970 for Amelia Dress in Pamplin, Va. as a cutting room assistant, and then fabric cutter. He moved to Appomattox as a cutter with Amelia Dress when the Pamplin facility was destroyed by fire, subsequently becoming the Amelia Dress cutting room manager sometime before 1983.  At about this time, Sandra started doing administrative work in the Appomattox facility, sorting, and tagging cut work as well as handling the printing of the care labels for all of the sewing factories.

In 1990 George relocated the cutting room and fabric inventory to the Jetersville location and joined Star Children’s Dress, still acting as the cutting room and fabric/trim manager.  Sandra went with him as administrative support.

In 1993 the Amelia sewing factory closed down and the cutting room with fabric and trim inventories was moved into that space.

In 2004 the Amelia cutting room was repurposed to a garment finishing facility, and once again, George and Sandra had to take the cutting room with the fabric and trim inventories on the road, this time to a building in Farmville.  A good deal of work went into the creation of the workspace, which George designed and had built.

In 2006 the decision was made to close Star’s Farmville domestic cutting operation, which had been supplying cut goods and trim to the Central American factories. George and Sandra facilitated the shutdown of the cutting room and the transfer of the fabric and trim to a Central American supplier of Star Children’s. After the Farmville facility was closed, George changed positions with Star and became the finished goods warehouse manager.  He became responsible for receiving and shipping in excess of four million garments per year.  Sandra continued in her administrative support role and became very involved with Star’s accounts payables system and has continued in this role over that past 10 years. George adapted well to a completely different job and has played an integral role in the improvement of Star’s facilities and expansion in the years since. He has managed an ever more complex shipping environment to Star’s retail customers, while effectively increasing productivity per employee and overall dollar volumes shipped.

He and Sandra will be greatly missed.