NELSON, LANCASHIRE, UK—In six years, Whyte & Ivory has become a sizeable importer/distributor of drapery linings and curtain fabrics in the UK and USA. Starting this year, Whyte & Ivory made an exclusive distribution deal with Rowley Company of Gastonia, NC, for the distribution of the core range stocked in the USA. Rowley Company is one of the leading US distributors of drapery and workroom hardware. “W&I is free to distribute its linings through other wholesale partners on an unbranded basis,” says Peter Hamilton, Managing Director. “We’re actually looking for a total of 50 great customers to achieve our goals, a business of about $25 million in sales.” He says that W&I imports container loads a week of hospitality sheers from China and Pakistan. W&I bought its own UK warehouse facility in 2011 and expanded the space by 65% in 2015, Hamilton says, “and we now carry over 500,000m of fabrics in wide and standard widths.” “W&I Distribution is exclusively through editors, wholesalers and jobbers, space created when our competition was forced by the recession in 2008 to break the established structures and try to cut out their customers; now our customers,” Hamilton explains. The W&I Focus is on the UK. The linings sold are US style drapery linings, interlinings and blackouts, contract sheers and contract linings and blackouts. These include stocked and custom decorative FR blackout ranges distributed by other leading fabric editors and into most of the world’s important hotel brands, Hamilton explains. Although the primary business of W&I lies in the UK market, W&I has traded in the US since 2010 and incorporated Whyte and Ivory LLC in the US in 2016. It works with a third party warehouse in Hickory, NC, where “we hold approximately 200,000m of a core range of drapery linings and sheers selected for the US wholesaler and jobber market,” says Peter Hamilton, Managing Director and a business partner with his wife Anne Collins. She started W&I in 2010 when she was an independent agent for Hanes Mfg. USA. Collins moved to the UK 12 years ago from her native Minnesota, via North Carolina, where she was a Product Manager, then Export Manager, at Hanes Fabrics. Before joining his wife in the new business, Hamilton was the Managing Director of Edmund Bell prior to its sale by Hanes Mfg. (European Operations) to the Atherton Family in 2007. Hamilton then left Edmund Bell to become Managing Director of a drapery lining start-up at J Rosenthal & Sons in Lancashire. “We had great support from Harry Rosenthal who helped us import and allowed us use of warehouse space. We bought out the fledgling drapery lining division I had started at J. Rosenthal,” Hamilton states. “We sold everything--from our road cars and a racing car, to watches and jewelry to rustle up the $100,000 we needed to start the new business. Our distribution model makes us rather “under cover” as a brand, but we respect our place in the supply chain.”