New fabric souce aiming to gain Altitude with Tupelo market debut
By Susan M. Andrews -- Furniture Today, February 17, 2003
Tupelo, Miss. — There's a new kid on the block among fabric sources in Tupelo this week.
Altitude Designs, a new division of Cutting Edge TexStyles, is making its furniture industry debut here in space 316 of the Mississippi Building.
The initial offering is a line of solids and prints that range in price from under $3 to $6.
President Joe Goldman said his company has been active in the futon market for years, and buyers suggested its designs would be great for the furniture industry.
"One of the things we've seen in the past year or two," he said, "is other companies picking up our designs and selling them successfully to upholstery manufacturers. That confirmed our belief that the line is right for furniture."
In December, Donna Halloran joined the company as merchandising manager, coming from Ametex, where she was in management for nine years. She has been working with Diane Poole, product development manager at Cutting Edge TexStyles, to re-engineer and recolor the line for the furniture industry.
"This is a value-oriented line," Halloran said. "It's fun and light-hearted and progressive. We do virtually no traditional florals, for example. We certainly can do those if that's what the customer needs, but we tend to be more contemporary and non-traditional."
The company, which sources greige goods from a number of offshore mills, does printing and dyeing near its offices outside Boston.
It warehouses more than a million yards of fabric in Monroe, N.C. Another plus for furniture manufacturers is that all the company's product is 60 inches wide instead of the traditional 54 inches, and 90% of the designs are "choppers," or non-directional patterns.
