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Remembering the man who meant luxury ticking

By Larry Thomas, Bedding editor -- Furniture Today, September 9, 2001

If you're a retailer, you probably never met Marcel Vanhoutte. But the luxurious damask ticking that covers much of the bedding on your sales floor indicates the influence he had on your business.

Vanhoutte, who headed sales and marketing efforts for Bekaert Textiles USA, died last month at 56 following a lengthy battle with cancer. To many U.S. bedding manufacturers, Bekaert is synonymous with the term "Belgian damask." And no one was more closely identified with Bekaert than Vanhoutte.

"He probably started the whole trend toward high-end ticking in America," said Earl Kluft, president of Spring Air's Los Angeles licensee and one of Vanhoutte's first U.S. customers. "Bekaert was the first (ticking supplier) in the luxury bedding arena … and they kind of pulled everybody else along."

Vanhoutte, a native of Belgium who began working for Bekaert in the mid-1960s, moved to the United States in 1989 to start Bekaert's operations here. Working out of a tiny warehouse/office in Greensboro, N.C., he carried a suitcase of premium fabrics that commanded prices of $5 or more per yard in an era when $4 per yard was considered expensive.

Bekaert, thanks largely to Vanhoutte's one-man road show, rather quickly established a toehold in the U.S. market. By the mid-1990s, luxury bedding sales were in high gear and Belgian damask was here to stay.

"Marcel understood style … and he understood that style is different for different companies," said Kingsdown President Eric Hinshaw, another early Vanhoutte convert. "He understood that good style for one company might not be good style for another company."

Manufacturers said Vanhoutte's knowledge of mattress manufacturing also set him apart from his peers, and his meticulous attention to customer service was legendary. And most importantly, he was a man whose word really was as good as his bond. "He was a gentleman in the truest sense of the word," said Hinshaw.

Perhaps his crowning achievement was the opening of Bekaert's first (and so far only) U.S. plant in Winston-Salem, N.C., in 1999. He had lobbied Bekaert officials in Belgium for years to open a U.S. plant, but he characteristically stayed in the background and publicly downplayed his own role when the sparkling facility was unveiled.

"This plant is here because of Marcel," said Scott Nelles, who's now Bekaert's vice president of U.S. sales. "We will forever be indebted to him for his immense contributions and his many years of service."

We made a big goof in our Aug. 27 column regarding the International Sleep Products Assn. forecast for 2001 bedding shipments. Its latest forecast, issued in April, calls for a 1.5% decline in shipments. We mistakenly said it was a 4.5% decline.

A revised forecast is due in late September or early October, and we'll make sure we get that one correct the first time.

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Obituaries

Sep 2, 2001

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