CONCORD, NC—Heritage House Fabrics LLC, a contract and residential fabrics distribution business and importer, has been sold to Wayne McNeely and Don Greene the president and executive vice president respectively of the new entity to be called Heritage Fabrics LLC.

The company will remain in the current warehouse and office here and with the High Point, NC showroom. Heritage sells through U.S. jobbers and this is not going to change according to the new buyers.

McNeely and Greene also hope to take advantage of the uptick in US housing starts to expand the business in the next five years.

McNeely had previously been in the residential furniture industry for 35 years, most recently as vice president with Braxton Culler, Inc., a medium priced upholstery manufacturer while Greene was a vice president at Robert Allen Home, heading up the piece goods business.

The pair expects to beef up Heritage’s upholstery and print fabric distribution through the ITC division without losing focus on the curtain fabric business Heritage is noted for, they stressed. Heritage imports tons of curtain fabrics from Turkey and India with some additional imports from Taiwan, China and Europe.  

Tom Hilb, founder of Heritage in 2003, was negotiating the deal for the past year, he said. He expects to retire from the business but will stay on for a time as a consultant, probably until 2015, he said. Hilb is a veteran fabric man with a skill for making acquisitions, namely, ITC, Belle Fabrics and Dana Mills, the companies he brought into the Heritage family in the last decade. Prior to starting Heritage, he was an executive with Richloom and Western Textiles, a converter no longer in business.