It was a big year for underwear.
Enter: Arq, a McMinnville-based underwear company, specializing in simple undergarments for adults, babies and children.
The company went from about $180 thousand in gross sales in 2018 to about $7.5 million in 2020.
Once you start looking, it feels like Arq is everywhere.
Case in point: A stranger asked me recently if the bright pink tank top I was wearing was Arq.
“Yep,” I said, only slightly embarrassed to be wearing something so instantly recognizable.
“I’m wearing the matching underwear!” she said.
The basic cotton undergarments — bras, tank tops and underwear — are comfortable, simple and knit and sewn in the United States from organic cotton. For people who have spent a year in extreme emotional distress, mostly at home, the appeal is obvious.
“Some of us have hugged for the first time,” Abigail Quist, 37, Arq’s founder, said on a recent Friday afternoon, at Arq’s headquarters in McMinnville.
“Because we’ve grown so fast,” Quist said, “we’ve hired people over the past year.”
Now that her staff is fully vaccinated, they were getting together in person, some of them for the first time.
Quist’s employees, some from McMinnville, some who work remotely from Portland, were gathered at the clean, bright warehouse/office space/photo studio/future retail space. Some were packing clothes…
