FT. LAUDERDALE, Florida — Family Distributors Inc.has formed a partnership with Coulisse to distribute roller shade components including shade fabric to other wholesalers and fabricators in the USA. The agreement becomes official January 1 between the two companies.  Family Distributors is a division of Unique Wholesale Distributors Inc. and the name will be changed to Coulisse Distributors in the near future. While working with Coulisse for the past four years, Unique says it has doubled in size including the motorization of shades. Unique Founder Sam Pampenella says he likes the Coulisse line of fabrics due to its European design, innovative colors and designs versus a very plain vanilla palette available from US. shade suppliers. He was a Graber distributor originally but balked when Graber tried to buy him out and move the business to Mexico. Sam never left the US and Graber set up shop in Mexico, he says. There are 2,000 sku’s in the Coulisse line and all of them are stocked on Pampenella’s shelves. “Graber and Hunter Douglas ate up the independent distributors,” Unique founder Sam Pampenella explains. “There are very few independents left in this business but I want to try to service them with components and fabrics.” The window coverings business is figured at $2.5 billion in sales at wholesale. Unique sells through dealers and not direct to the end user. Unique is one of the top manufacturers of finished window shades in the US. It supplies a nationwide network of as many as 5,000 mom and pop dealers according to Pampenella. The average roller shade sold by Unique costs $200-$300 each at wholesale which is considered the upper end of the market. Unique also services about a half dozen Internet sellers of roller shade. “I never dreamed the Internet would become so important to shade sales,” he says. “It accounts for 20 percent of the business today, about $500 million in sales.” Unique keeps 20 trucks on the road delivering to dealers in the Carolinas and Georgia. It has a separate company in South Carolina to help this effort. Unique has no trouble filling up a Fedex truck every day for sales to the rest of the country. Delivery r=from receipt of order from the dealer is 7-10 days. The company started business in 1980 in Pampenella’s garage and today, it occupies over 100,000 square feet in eight buildings which Pampenella has to tour in a golf cart to get around. Unique employs 330 people, many who have worked in the company for over 25 years,  Pampenella explains. His two daughters and sons in law are part of the business.  His daughter Kim Buxbaum runs the designer showroom part of the business, which features many jobber lines of fabric in catering to the designer trade. Her husband Danny runs Family Distributors and will work closely with Coulisse in the new distribution company. Son in law Chris Collins is the CEO and his wife Laura helps out with special projects. Pampenella’s nephews run the office and factory. Nevertheless, Pampenella works 10-hour days and longs to slow down a bit. He intends to do so by hiring more upper management executives in the future.