VALDESE, North Carolina — Valdese Weavers upholstery fabric sales have returned to approximately pre recession levels of $150 million and now promise to go even higher, according to Michael Shelton, CEO and president. 

The company has five divisions today: Valdese Weavers, Home Fabrics, Valdese Weavers Contract, Valdese International Products (VIP) and Circa 1801. All divisions produce products adhering to a mass customization concept, which represents a maximum value added element to the fabrics delivered to their customers, according to Shelton. “We feel that we are making significant investments in our business, and our future, to enhance our leadership position in the textile industry as a technically advanced enterprise ,” Shelton said. Michael Shelton

Here’s a company which bought more looms, jacquard heads, yarn dying capability and finishing with the 2007 bankruptcy auction purchase of Home fabrics, Circa 1801 and Mastercraft Contract, the business units of Joan Fabrics. Today, Valdese Weavers is the largest home fabrics mill in the USA with a totally vertical operation, yarn forward. “We choose to purchase yarn instead of spinning it ourselves. We want to remain flexible to utilize yarns to create qualities of fabric that represent current fashion, and are desired by our customers,” Shelton explains. 

Every day of his life Mike Shelton thinks about being competitive while delivering profitability through the mass customization concept utilized by Valdese Weavers. As much as 75 percent of the company’s sales are in customized products today. “We aspire to develop and sell our customers products which fit their specific needs, as opposed to selling the same product to everyone,” he explains. While other textile companies have faltered and disappeared in the USA and elsewhere in the world, Valdese Weavers is moving ahead in the custom upholstery arena. 

Shelton is a 25 year man at Valdese Weavers. He encourages Valdese Weavers management to spend its time tweaking its one million square feet of manufacturing and office space and fine tuning its mass customization concept. The company has an archive of 200,000 designs using a minimum of loom set-ups. The company has now taken 2,500 examples of its latest and best selling products into a ‘virtual sample bag’ which helps the customer to merchandise their products. The virtual sample bag uses proprietary software and is designed for the technically savvy customer, Shelton says. Valdese Weavers hopes to enhance the efficiency of the buying process with this system. “Sample costs burden all points of the supply chain in the entire industry,” Shelton says. “I think we are with our virtual sample bag and sampling techniques, on the leading edge of evolving the buy/sell relationship with our customers.” 

Valdese can produce a custom product with a minimum order quantity of one piece. It can cone dye discrete quantities of yarn to make as little as 50 yards of a custom product. The company recently overhauled existing looms, but also purchased 30 new high speed Dornier looms.” Each of the new looms are far more productive than the looms replaced,” he says. “Valdese Weavers can fill orders with one piece minimums. The customer can be involved in its creation from start to finish in a collaborative effort in order to achieve customization. Today, the game is all about highly diverse styling with short runs, yet with the capability to generate volume production runs if needed. That’s what our customer wants, and what we feel Valdese Weavers delivers.”