The story
Originally, Alliance rubber bands were made from cutting rejected rubber inner tubes. Spencer took the bands to the Akron Beacon Journal and persuaded them to wrap their newspapers with a band to prevent them from coming apart and blowing across lawns.
Alliance went on to expand its business in 1944 with an additional production plant in Hot Springs, Arkansas. In 1976, William H. Spencer retired from the day-to-day operations and passed on the management of the business to other family members.
In March 2020, Alliance announced that they would retool their manufacturing facility to create products (such as Rubber Strips) used to manufacture personal protective equipment (PPE) to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.
From Wikipedia’s article on Alliance Rubber Company, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5