Charlotte, NC — After losing its president in 2007, Steven Shuford, executive vice president of Shuford Mills decided to take a greater role in the day to day activities of this outdoor fabric manufacturer, producer of the Outdura® brand of acrylic fabric.

The corporate offices of Shuford are located in Charlotte but the mill is based in Hudson, NC. Shuford had been in the acrylic yarn business but sold that business in 2006 to concentrate fulltime on the fabric side of the business. The fifth generation Shuford family manager traces his family's textile involvement back to 1880. His father was considered a textile sage.

Shuford, with sales in the $18 million range, mainly dobbies and some jacquards, is part of the $300 million Shurtape Technologies Corp., an adhesive tape company also owned by the Shuford family. It grew out of the fabric business and actually started in a small corner of the 100,000 square foot Hudson based mill.

"We had a 30 percent sales increase at Shuford Mills last year," said Shuford and our goals are to keep our deliveries to four weeks for standard products and to four to six weeks for custom products." Shuford also said there is a quick ship program which can deliver product in just three weeks.

The Shuford line is pretty basic he says with 120 sku's presented in 1,000 books including solids.