Haggar Acquires Tribal Sportswear

Dallas-based Haggar Clothing Co. has acquired women’s sportswear manufacturer Tribal Sportswear, Montreal, from Kilmer Capital Fund L.P. for an undisclosed amount.

Tribal Sportswear, founded in 1976 as a women’s trouser company, sells its casualwear and careerwear in more than 2,000 specialty stores in North America. Haggar expects Tribal’s business to complement its own women’s business in Canada at Sears and The Bay, and help expand that business’s North American presence.

Tribal will retain its Montreal headquarters. Steven Richman has been named president of the new division and will work alongside Haggar Canada Co. President Brian Main.

“I am very excited that Haggar shares the same recognition of the unique position in the independent boutique channel that Tribal has earned,” Richman said. “Tribal’s strong position in the boutique channel is in many ways thanks to its dedicated and creative workforce. With Haggar’s vast resources, Tribal will be able to leverage and continue building and growing the brand.”

January/February 2014

Highland Industries To Expand Cheraw, S.C., Plant

Highland Industries Inc., Kernersville, N.C., will invest $4.1 million to expand its Cheraw, S.C., manufacturing facility and add 24 jobs over the next two years. The company reports increased customer demand for its technical fabrics, which are used in products including automotive parts, military tents and backpacks, rockets, and roofing, among other products.

The fabrics are woven or knitted on state-of- the-art equipment at the Cheraw plant, which offers fabric forming and aqueous coating capabilities.

“We have long been committed to South Carolina. Continued investment in our manufacturing capabilities and our people here is the key to our future success,” said Scott Burkhart, the company’s director of manufacturing.

Highland Industries is owned by Takata Corp., a Japan-based manufacturer of automotive safety systems. The company celebrated the 50th anniversary of its Cheraw facility in 2012, and notes that it maintains zero- landfill status in all of its manufacturing processes.

January/February 2014

Burlington Turns 90

Burlington, Greensboro, N.C., a division of International Textile Group Inc. (ITG), recently celebrated its 90th anniversary. The company was founded in 1923 by J. Spencer Love, who had purchased his uncle’s textile mill in Gastonia, N.C., and moved the machinery and equipment to Burlington, N.C. The company first produced cotton fabrics and later, rayon fabrics, soon becoming the leading rayon fabrics producer in the United States.

Burlington expanded by acquiring and reopening shuttered textile mills. It moved its headquarters to Greensboro in 1935, and by 1936, it operated 22 plants and had revenues totaling $25 million. It was listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1937. During World War II, it produced military textiles and developed parachute cloth made with nylon, which was invented in the 1930s and was used in place of silk and rayon.

After the war ended, Burlington continued to grow and also to develop nylon fabrics for apparel, furniture, home furnishings, hosiery, industrial and specialty applications. By 1973, it operated 169 plants globally and employed 88,000 workers. However, an influx of imports stymied its growth, and it turned its attention to product specialization and plant modernization, and implemented more efficient processes to enable it to compete in a global market.

In 1987, Burlington defeated a hostile takeover attempt, and subsequently downsized and became a private company. By 1992, it re-emerged as a public company, but continued import challenges and incurred debts forced it to restructure in 2003. At that time, it was acquired by WL Ross & Co. and made a part of ITG.

Today, Burlington has eight production sites in the U.S., Mexico and China; and specializes in technical fabrics for outdoor active, casual, military and uniform apparel; as well as for automotive, barrier, fire protection and contract hospitality applications. The Burlington Labs division was founded in 2006 as a R&D center and knowledge bank.

“Burlington’s successes came from its innovations with new products, new machinery, and new branding strategies, and we congratulate the men and women of Burlington, both today and generations before us, for their contributions to this great brand,” said Joseph L. Gorga, CEO, ITG.


Burlington employees pose in front of Pioneer Plant, Burlington’s first plant, in the 1920s. At the far right is founder J. Spencer Love.

January/February 2014

GCS To Build Plant In Louisiana

Gulf Coast Spinning Co. LLC (GCS), a new venture undertaken by the management group of Lacassine, La.-based Zagis USA LLC, will invest $130 million to build a cotton spinning facility in Bunkie, La. The investment will result in the creation of an estimated 290 jobs.

The facility is the second of two that Zagis USA announced in 2008 it would build in Louisiana. The first, which represented a $20 million investment, opened in Lacassine in late 2009. Together, the two mills are expected to generate 386 direct and 1,040 indirect jobs.

GCS expects to begin construction in mid-2014 on the 600,000-square-foot Bunkie facility comprising two operations — a ring-spinning operation equipped with 43,200 Zinser spindles that will be able to spin up to 450,000 pounds per week of premium cotton and cotton/synthetic carded and combed yarns for knit and woven apparel, and specialty denim yarns; and an open-end operation equipped with 17,280 rotors supplied by five blending lines and 52 cards, with a weekly capacity of up to 2.5 million pounds of cotton/synthetic and synthetic yarns.

The facility will be four times larger than Zagis USA’s Lacassine mill, which produces 100-percent cotton open-end yarns.

GCS plans to export most of its yarn, similarly to the Lacassine mill, which exports 85 percent of its spun yarn. Once the Bunkie mill is commissioned, the two mills together are expected to utilize some 15 to 20 percent of Louisiana’s total cotton crop.

January/February 2014

Crisco Announces Run For Congress

Keith Crisco, president and chairman of Asheboro Elastics Corp. (AEC), Asheboro, N.C., and a former North Carolina secretary of commerce serving under former Governor Beverly Perdue, is running for the U.S. Congress. Crisco, a Democrat, is challenging Republican incumbent Renee Ellmers of Dunn, N.C., for her seat in North Carolina’s Second Congressional District. Both candidates must first win their respective 2014 Congressional primaries, which will be held May 6.

“I am running for North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District because I believe we need to return to sensitive bipartisan policies, reduce sky-high unemployment and improve educational opportunities for our children,” Crisco said.

AEC, founded in 1986, employs more than 160 people, has manufacturing plants in Asheboro, El Salvador and Honduras, and has annual sales of more than $18 million.

January/February 2014

Cooley Group: Diversified Company Reaches Out For Global Opportunities

Cooley Group is a worldwide leader in the development and manufacture of high-performance flexible and sustainable fabrics used in applications including water, fuel and chemical containment; military equipment; commercial roofing; and outdoor advertising. Established in 1926, it is based in Pawtucket, R.I., and has manufacturing facilities in three locations.

Daniel R. Dwight was appointed president, CEO and director of Cooley Group in March 2011. He has extensive executive global leadership experience in business development, manufacturing and operations, and technology commercialization, including 17 years with GE in the Americas, Asia and Europe.
 


Daniel R. Dwight, president and CEO, Cooley Group

Textile World: You’ve been on board at Cooley for about two years now. What attracted you to the company? What challenges have you faced?

Dwight: Cooley’s people and reputation attracted me to the company. Cooley is a manufacturing company that operates under the simple premise that people, not machines, make products. The belief that every employee can make a difference in delivering proven performance to our customers is what sets Cooley apart from our competitors.  

For example, when Cooley was developing the stadium wrap for the 2012 London Olympic Stadium, our machine operators, R&D technicians and sales team were working together on the factory floor collectively with our collaborative partner, Dow Chemical, to drive development and production of the best possible customer solution. Our challenge with the stadium was that it was built to be taken apart after the Olympic Games were through. We had to hide the inside structure. We ended up developing 25-meter-high by 2-meter-wide banners to cover all the beams and supports that had been visible on the inside walls of the stadium. It took more than 335 banners. The result of this collective effort was a world-class product solution that exceeded our customer’s performance expectation.  

The strength of the Cooley brand globally continues to amaze me. I spend a significant portion of my time traveling the globe meeting with Cooley customers to assess our strengths and weaknesses while looking to identify new market opportunities. Almost everyone I meet is intimately familiar with Cooley’s reputation as a company that delivers proven performance.

As president and CEO, I face the challenge of harnessing the strength of our team, our global reputation for proven performance and innovation, and our collaborative partnerships into a comprehensive strategy for accelerated growth.
 
TW: At the recent IFAI Specialty Fabrics Show in Orlando, the consensus of a number of exhibitors seemed to be that there is a lack of industry momentum right now. Do you agree?

Dwight: As a highly diversified, global company, we are operating with a ton of momentum right now. This momentum is enhanced by our level of innovation. With 40 percent of our revenue annually from new products, we are focused on developing innovative, new solutions for our global customers. Our innovation is a direct function of the strength of our people and their commitment to our customers. Product development is not the sole responsibility of R&D, but a company-wide responsibility that involves every employee.

Water containment, for example, is a very strong opportunity market for us. Limited clean water hampers growth in developing nations. Containment and separation play to the strengths of our products for geosynthetics, desalination and hazardous containment applications.


Cooley recently completed a fuel storage project in Siberia.

 
TW: Cooley seems to be involved in a number of very distinct market segments. Which are the major markets and about what percentage does each represent?  

Dwight: Cooley has three core businesses: Building Products, Commercial Graphics and Engineered Membranes. Building Products services principally the commercial roofing market, although this past year, our Building Products team entered the recreational vehicle and mobile storage market with a highly innovative new product solution that has been very well received. Our Commercial Graphics team services the out-of-home advertising, signage and awning markets. Our recently launched 100- percent recyclable, polyethylene (PE) print media material has been getting rave reviews from our North and South American and European customers. Our Engineered Membranes team services a highly diversified mix of markets. The team continues to accelerate not only its new product offerings but also its geographic expansion, particularly into Russia, Turkey and Eastern Europe.

TW: Give us some examples of international projects.

Dwight: We just completed a huge fuel storage project in Siberia and have applied our leading oil boom containment membrane for prophylactic protection of a desalination facility in Dubai. We recently signed an agreement with Hewlett-Packard to be their global print media supplier for their latex line of commercial printers — which complements our opening of a new office in Germany to support our Europe, Middle East and North African expansions.
 
TW: In your military market involvement, have you seen a decrease due to budget cuts? If so, how do you plan to make up for the lost business?

Dwight: Our military business continues to grow, which is great news not just because of the budget cuts but because we exited one of our larger military markets in 2012 — the military tent market could not meet our profitability objective. Specific military products include material for military raiding craft and chemical containment businesses.  
 
TW: Company literature says more than 40 percent of Cooley’s annual revenue comes from new products. Can you elaborate on this?

Dwight: Cooley gets 40 percent of our revenue from new products not only because we are highly innovative but also because we are not afraid to cannibalize our own successful products in search of better solutions for our customers. For example, we drove the billboard market from 12-ounce (oz) polyvinyl chloride (PVC) to 7-oz PVC; we are now driving the market to our newest product offering, 4.2-oz PE.  We entered the natural gas fracking market in 2013 with a highly innovative geomembrane polyurethane product solution for the storage of the water and chemicals used in this highly liquid-intensive process.  Our new recreational vehicle roofing product offers the RV manufacturer a roofing solution that is easier to install while offering better performance.  
 
TW: What specific issues or market drivers influence Cooley’s prosperity?

Dwight: As a company that distributes its products in over 50 countries on six continents, we have benefited and continue to benefit from free trade agreements. We also benefit from the broader global demand for international product performance standards. For example, we are winning more and more international commercial roofing business because of the growing demand for Factory Mutual (FM) rated quality standards for building materials among building owners and operators in places like China, Turkey and the Middle East. For the same reason Toyota is purchasing our roofing solutions for its U.S. manufacturing facilities, Toyota is also purchasing Cooley solutions for its production facility in Turkey — and that reason is Cooley’s proven performance.

TW: Tell us about your management team.

Dwight: The Cooley leadership team is as diverse as the products we offer and markets we serve. P. Robert Siener Jr., our chairman, just celebrated 65 years with the company and continues to be the emotional driver behind innovation at Cooley, the champion of everything “new, new, new.” Our diversity is exemplified in our two core divisional business leaders, who both bring worldwide sales leadership to Cooley but come from widely diverse backgrounds: David Lunati, business leader for our Engineered Membranes and Building Products businesses, has a degree from Harvard; while Bryan Rose, business leader for our Commercial Graphics business, was educated on the floor of a Cooley warehouse where he started his career over 25 years ago. David Pettey, our COO, has a Ph.D. along with decades of textile and extrusion operating experience. Ron Markovsky, our CFO, has decades of finance and controllership experience with a diverse group of mid-market-size companies.
 

Editor’s note: Stephen M. Warner, Arden Hills, Minn., is publisher of BeaverLake6 Report, beaverlake6.com, a Web-based newsletter reporting on trends, data and issues that he feels influence the technical textiles industry. He also is former president and CEO of Industrial Fabrics Association International.

January/February 2014

Cotton Made In Africa Continues Its Path Of Success

ACCRA/HAMBURG/HARARE/LUSAKA — February 13, 2014 — Nearly 70,000 smallholder farmers in Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Côte d’Ivoire benefit from the Cotton made in Africa (CmiA) initiative’s program for the first time and are able to market CmiA-tested cotton. In this way, the initiative is further expanding its cooperation with smallholder families in Sub-Saharan Africa and making a significant contribution to improving their living conditions.

According to the Human Development Index of the United Nations, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Côte d’Ivoire are among the least developed countries in the world. In order to fully realize their potential, particular in the agricultural sector, CmiA focuses on sustainable and efficient cotton production. For the first time, the initiative is active in Ghana and cooperates with roughly 9,000 local smallholder farmers and the cotton company Olam. CmiA has already successfully contributed to improving the living conditions of smallholder farmers in Zimbabwe, Zambia, and Côte d’Ivoire. After successfully receiving CmiA standard certification, an additional 61,000 cotton farmers and the cotton companies Alliance in Zimbabwe and Zambia and Seco in Côte d’Ivoire are now initiative partners.

Through training programs, Cotton made in Africa teaches cotton farmers about modern, efficient, and environmentally friendly cultivation methods that help them improve the quality of their cotton, yield higher crops, and thus earn a better income.

Christoph Kaut, Managing Director of the Aid by Trade Foundation, is pleased about this latest milestone: “Not only the farmers but also their family members profit from the newly established cooperations with CmiA: In Ghana we are able to reach about 100,000 persons, in Zimbabwe, Zambia and Côte d’Ivoire roughly 486,000. This is a great success for all participants in the cotton growing regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and for our initiative.” In total, about 435,000 smallholder farmers and with their family members included more than 3.2 million people currently participate in the CmiA program.

Posted February 14, 2014

Source: Aid by Trade Foundation

Industry Invited To AATCC International Conference 2014

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, N.C. — February 14, 2014 — With a pre-conference tutorial and presentations featuring industry leaders, plus opportunities to build or expand your professional network, the AATCC International Conference for 2014, is a “must attend.”

A major industry event, IC 2014, as it’s known, will be held in Asheville, NC, USA, from April 1-3 and feature educational tracks, a poster session, the Herman and Myrtle Goldstein Student Paper Competition, networking receptions, and the annual Awards Luncheon, where AATCC’s most prestigious honors will be presented.

Registrants and attendees can learn more before and during IC 2014 by following the event’s Twitter and Facebook Hashtag: #a2ic14

The education portion of the conference will include three tracks reflecting the Association’s Interest Groups: Concept 2 Consumer® (C2C), Chemical Applications, and Materials. Sessions in the C2C track will cover concept and design insights; a glimpse at what’s new—color, print and product development; supply chain  trends today and tomorrow; and consumer interests—product performance and innovation for the retail marketplace. The Chemical Applications track will address sustainability, coloration, advances in application technology, and also include the Herman and Myrtle Goldstein Student Paper Competition.  Presentations in the Materials track will include protective textiles, medical textiles, and innovative technologies.

The conference, which will be held at the Crowne Plaza Resort, is open to anyone who would like to attend.

Additional information and registration links are available on the AATCC website.

Posted February 14, 2014

Source: AATCC

National Spinning Co., Inc. Names Booterbaugh President

WASHINGTON, N.C. — February 10, 2014 — The Board of National Spinning Co., Inc. has unanimously elected James (Jim) Booterbaugh President of National Spinning Co., Inc., effective immediately. Booterbaugh succeeds James (Jim) Chesnutt, who will retain the titles of Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board.

In making the announcement, CEO James Chesnutt stated, “Jim has shown extraordinary talent and delivered strong results in his time with National Spinning. We could not have picked a candidate with a stronger track record of leadership, skill, and industry knowledge.” Chesnutt added, “Jim will help us continue to support our core businesses while responding to new opportunities and challenges.”

Booterbaugh, familiarly known to many as “Boot,” has been with National Spinning since 2004. His most recent position was Chief Operating Officer. Additionally, he serves as corporate Secretary.

Prior to joining National, Booterbaugh worked at Harriet & Henderson Yarns, The Institute of Textile Technology, and Milliken & Company. He holds a BS from Virginia Tech and an MS from the Institute of Textile Technology.

Booterbaugh is a former President and Chairman of the Southern Textile Association, and has served as advisory board member for the North Carolina Textile Technology Center. He currently sits as industry advisory board member for the TATM Department at North Carolina State University.

Booterbaugh resides in Chapel Hill, NC with wife Ann and son Grant. Their two daughters Maggie and Hayley attend university in North Carolina.


Booterbaugh

Posted February 14, 2014

Source: National Spinning

Dixie Group’s Masland Carpet, Desso Form JV

Chattanooga, Tenn.-based carpet and rug manufacturer The Dixie Group Inc. and the Netherlands-based carpet and carpet tile manufacturer Desso Holding BV have signed a non-binding letter of intent to form a joint venture (JV) in conjunction with Dixie Group’s Masland Contract division. Under the JV, the companies would offer a complete floorcovering selection for the U.S. hospitality market as well as for international distribution.
 
In addition, the two companies have signed a conditional agreement under which Dixie Group will be the exclusive U.S. distributor of certain Desso high-performance carpet tile products. Conditions include the requirement that Dixie meet certain sales levels and the hospitality JV’s successful launch.
 
“Desso and Masland Contract share the same values of producing environmentally responsible flooring products that stand out in their design and functionality,” said Daniel K. Frierson, CEO, Dixie Group. “We look forward to this exciting new venture.”
 
“Our shared values around innovation, design and green principles will enable Desso to meet its goal of expansion into the U.S. market and support our mutual growth in this high potential market,” said Alexander Collot d’Escury, CEO, Desso.
 
February 11, 2014
 

1...1,8211,8221,823...2,521Page 1,822 of 2,521

Sponsors

Breaking News

Load more

Digital Issue

2025 Quarterly Issue Number II

View Latest Digital Issue

FEATURED ARTICLES

© Copyright 2017 Textile Industries Media Group, LLC.