American Century Hires For Bedding, Buys DC

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 9/5/2005 12:00:00 AM

Archdale, N.C. — —

Archdale, N.C. —In two major expansions, American Century Home Fabrics has hired Myron Bass and Susan Morris to bolster its bedding business, and purchased a distribution facility in Salisbury, N.C.

In the five years that it has been focusing on sales in the United States, the company has growth close to $100 million in sales, said Tom Finneran, president.

Bass, formerly vice president of decorative fabric sales for Burlington Industries, is responsible for the growth and development of the company's bedding business. He reports to Jason Jiang, company CEO, and Finneran.

Also joining the company is Morris, who is responsible for all design development and product conception for the fashion bedding and window divisions. She formerly was with Albion Studios in High Point.

The cut-to-yardage business that markets to more than 1,000 mid- to high-end interior designers across the country continues to be headed by Craig Rice, vice president.

The company will move its distribution center from High Point, N.C., to a new 572,000-square-foot distribution center in Salisbury, N.C., formerly a Fieldcrest Cannon facility. The move, to be completed by mid-September, will house the company's stock of 3,500 skus of upholstery, bedding and window fabrics.

“Our business has been great,” said Jiang, and the new facility will “accommodate the continuing growth of both our bedding and fabric sales. In addition, the company plans to build a bedding showroom at Salisbury “to mirror the showroom at our manufacturing location in Hanzhou City, China in order to enable us to more easily interact with our customers and their buying offices at any time in both countries.”

American Century Home also operates two facilities in Zhejiang Province of 750,000 square feet of weaving and finished product manufacturing. “We have over 2.5 million yards of stock in fabrics and 1.75 million finished product units ready to ship,” said Finneran.