VANCOUVER, Canada — Wow Textiles, a $12 million jobber, importer and distributor is capitalizing on the decline of smaller fabric jobbers in the under $2 million  and under $5 million sales range by making timely acquisitions, according to its principal, Swapna Kataria.

“We are able to start and finish these smaller deals in a couple of months when the owners want to sell and not waste their time or ours in the process," Kataria said. "The reality of the fabrics industry has changed because you can’t generate multi-million dollar sales from 50 fabrics in a book anymore," according to Kataria, an international fabric jobber based in Thessaloniki, Greece and India.

In 2007, Wow Textiles of India bought Aftex, a drapery fabric wholesaler in Vancouver; Wow is Canadian owned by Kataria. He makes frequent trips two to three times per week between Vancouver, his home and Toronto, the headquarters where he spends two to three days per week. There are also a lot of sourcing trips to India and China, he said.

“The shelf life of the books on a counter used to be four to five years and today it’s only one year," said Katoria. "If you launch a collection in July you’ll see sales life for maybe two Christmas seasons.”

In 2008, he expanded his Canadian operation to Thessaloniki where he services Eastern European markets.

Read the article in our summer issue here.