BARCELONA, Spain —Hispano Tex S.A., a 60 year old Spanish weaver, printer and home textile cut and sew supplier to major retailers and wholesalers worldwide is setting its sights on the American market for the first time in its history according to Victor Melul, General Manager. Over 90 percent of its production is exported. About 60 percent of the business is piecegoods including industrial orders The company is now targeting IKEA type retailers in the USA like Walmart and J.C. Penney and is looking for sales agents in North America. Hispano Tex already has customers in Quebec, Canada. While Spanish printers have come and gone in the decorative fabrics business, Hispano Tex with 350 employees says it has prospered and grown in the last five years. Since its birth in Barcelona in 1956, it has been dedicated to the manufacture of Home Textiles unlike so many other printers worldwide, which prefer to print piecegoods only. It seems that Hispano Tex has found a market for prints because it doesn’t stop with the piecegoods. The company says it does not buy any piecegoods or greige from anyone else in the world—including China, Pakistan, Bangladesh or India. That means Hispano Tex competes with these countries for the same customers and is successful. “We supply all home textiles and piecegoods to major retailers like Ikea, Leroy Merlin, Lidl and Carrefour for example to name a few,” Melul says. “Some of these customers are focused on kitchen and table textiles; others buy everything from us. If the customer requires finished curtains or bedding, we make it in our own workrooms, pack and ship it.” Melul is in charge of Production and Quality Assurance at the company and also a member of one of the two founding families of Hispano Tex; Isaac Levy Faig heads the other founding family. Melul and Deborah Jusmet, Marketing Director, will direct the North American market effort. “We produce not only piecegoods and finished products; we also have a higher percentage on half ready tissue, ready to print, ready to dye, ready to finish… these are our biggest consumers,” Melul states, pointing to the company’s flexibility. “We make finished product and piecegoods at all price levels from mass to editeur lines. This is actually one of our competitive strengths, and we have diversified our production processes accordingly. We also have the ability to customize pricing to the maximum, by country, by final application, by volumes.” Hispano Tex only discusses pricing with individual customers and prefers to keep quiet about pricing. “We also have a line of finished curtains, bedding, bed sheets, duvet covers, pillows, padded bedspreads, acrylic finished table cloths, aprons, cushions--we do it all in house,” he says. Hispano Tex makes decorative piecegoods, prints and solids on 12 different basecloths including outdoor fabrics. If the customer wants just the piecegoods, we have that too. We have already adapted to sell full width or narrow width, based on the client’s or manufacturers requirements. “As a textile company, Hispano Tex S.A. stands out by being involved in every stage of the production of its products. To achieve this control it has a weaving factory in Maia, Barcelona with 150 modern looms producing large quantities and an unlimited variety of fabrics, seven days a week, 24 hours a day, Melul says. In addition to a company owned weaving factory in Moiá, Hispano Tex has a separate finishing factory. “There, we rely on the most modern and versatile machinery available, allowing us to produce any kind of finishing imaginable. The company offers rotary screen and flat printing; dyeing or any special finish including fireproof, flame retardant, hypoallergenic, biodegradeable blackout and water repellent.” “We have a warehouse also in Moiá, from where we supply our clients world-wide with stocks, whether it be “piece by piece” shipments full trucks, or full containers.” In this era, when so many companies source greige goods worldwide, Hispano Tex chooses to weave its own greige in house as well as all the fabrics it needs for printing and weaving. “Only in a factory with a mode of production in which the fabric is checked and controlled all the way from the preliminary stages until the very finish can we guarantee the quality of the product,” Melul maintains.