Shimizu resigns from Pillowtex

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 1/15/2003 4:40:00 PM

Kannapolis, NC — Closing out a 20-year career at Pillowtex Corp., Scott Shimizu has resigned as executive vp, effective at the end of the month.

Shimizu joined the company almost 21 years ago, in June 1982, as a salesman in the Chicago office, rose through the ranks to become head of sales and marketing and most recently to his current post. A one-time confidante to former ceo Chuck Hansen, Shimizu was one of a handful of individuals who held the company together during the last days of Hansen's regime; its subsequent bankruptcy; and more recently a series of top management shifts that included the ouster of former president and coo Tony Williams.

"It's just time to go," Shimizu told Home Textiles Today in a telephone conversation today. "It was great while it lasted, and I love this place. It's been my whole life, but it's time."

Shimizu said he has no current plans. "I'm still here through the end of this month, and I'll think about it then."

Shimizu was one of the three principal agents of Pillowtex's growth over the past decades, along with former owner John Silverthorne and later Chuck Hansen. During Shimizu's tenure, the company grew from $35 million in annual sales to slightly in excess of $1.5 billion after it acquired Fieldcrest Cannon.

"The thing that I'm really proud of is that we never missed a payroll. Even when things were at their worst, when the wheels were falling off the company, when Hansen was out of there and no one was really running the company before we went into bankruptcy, we always got the checks out," he said. "Sometimes with a lot of help from friends, but we did it."