Aussino looks to China for import future

Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 10/1/2001 12:00:00 AM

Aussino

Shanghai

Executive vp: Steven Lewis

Principal businesses: top of bed, sheeting

Aussino, a manufacturer of top-of-bed products and sheeting, is among the growing list of companies that believes China is the country around which the home textiles world will revolve one day.

According to Steven Lewis, executive vp, Aussino is involved with as many as 10 different facilities in China with 100 percent ownership of all of the inventory. The U.S. counterpart for Shanghai-based Aussino deals exclusively with China and has no plans to go anywhere else for its products.

"China is the up-and-coming country," Lewis said. "Once quotas are lifted, China will be the dominant country in the world. Any product we need can be made there."

And while many manufacturers say their overseas merchandising and retailing operations are limited, Aussino has enormous distribution overseas, Lewis said. With its products already being sold in Asia, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, and with its own retail arm in Asia, Aussino hopes to be one step ahead of those companies looking to one day establish toeholds there.

"We will be a major supplier in the United States in the future in both the retail and wholesale sides," Lewis said about Aussino's hopes for the U.S. marketplace. "We have big plans and an enormous amount of corporate backing.