On the evening of September 26, 2024, Justin James headed home from work, expecting to be back at his Opie Way sneaker factory on Monday. Chris Bower and Rett Murphy were in Turin, Italy, showcasing their Eda Rhyne Distilling Company spirits at an international festival. But that night, Hurricane Helene barreled through the Florida Gulf Coast and made its way up through Georgia into South Carolina and Western North Carolina. The Opie Way shoe factory was about fifteen minutes southeast of downtown Asheville. The Eda Rhyne distillery sat in Biltmore Village. The storm spared neither.
“Walking through that building that first day, about four days after the storm, I probably spent three hours inside,” James says. “Things had already started to mold, because it was a just-under-a-million-square-foot building and had a six-foot river running through it.”
With his only source of light coming from his headlamp, James salvaged about twenty pairs of his bespoke shoes from the wreckage. Everything else—the leather, machines, soles splayed out in the now-muddied parking lot—was gone. Just one month shy of its fifth anniversary, Opie Way as James knew it had been swept away.
Meanwhile, in Italy, Bower and Murphy had no idea a storm was coming to Asheville until after it hit. Unlike those in the hurricane’s path, the two had cell service and could see the damage the storm left behind through photos sent to them of their distillery underwater. “It was very devastating, especially on my end, since my house got hit,” Bower says. “I came back and I had three trees on my house. To see the distillery just totally wrecked—we got five-and-a-half feet of water in there, the place was full of mud. We lost so much inventory.”
But as strong as the storm’s fury had been, the Western North Carolina community’s resilience was stronger. Restaurants gave out free food, neighbors helped clear debris, and those watching the destruction unravel on social media from afar spread the word about donations and fundraising. This spirit of community fostered hope in both James at Opie Way and Bower and Murphy at Eda Rhyne to start the recovery process.
“I lost all hope,” James says. “And to then see how those other brands were talking about us, and to see how their customers and followers were being so positive about us not going away, that was really what put in my head: Okay, we have to rebuild this.”
“The community really helped us out on the rebuild,” Bower reiterates. “People came together to help us just get back open. And there was a group from New Orleans that came in, Resilience Force, [that] really helped us push it over the finish line.”
Though the rebuilding process has been no easy feat, both Opie Way and Eda Rhyne are well on their way to recovery. Opie Way will open a new factory this spring in Landrum, South Carolina, about an hour south of Asheville, and Eda Rhyne has just shipped out their first batch of restock— including their Made in the South award–winning Appalachian fernet—since the storm.
Amid all the devastation, there have been a few silver linings. In January, James launched a new venture, Pearl Boot Co., something he’s dreamed of doing since he was a child and had been working on before the storm. And ahead of relaunching Opie Way in the coming months, he is also developing a forthcoming line of merchandise, including socks and T-shirts, as one last push to raise funds to rebuild—aptly named “Hell or High Water.”
“It’s very easy to lean in on the negative thing that happened to us, but I think there might be more positive things that come out of this than the negative,” James says. “I think this is going to push Opie into a direction that we really needed to move, but we couldn’t do that unless we lost everything the way that we did. I think it’s going to be a very good thing for us in the long run.”
At Eda Rhyne, along with their flagship spirits, Bower and Murphy just started selling their own whiskey, which they initially planned to release in October 2024, right before news of their Made in the South recognition would hit. “The hard part was getting the honor of the Made in the South Awards, and then not being able to fulfill the desire,” Bower said. “Hopefully now we can do that and try to get into more stores, bars, and restaurants, and just share it with the world. It feels good to be able to do that again.”
Read more about Opie Way, the overall winner of Garden & Gun’s 2020 Made in the South Awards, and Eda Rhyne, the Drinks winner of Garden & Gun’s 2024 Made in the South Awards. Enter this year’s awards here.
