Blanket vets launch new company in venture with Pac-Fung

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 10/9/2002 3:04:00 PM

Asheville, NC — Rising like a phoenix, a team of 30-year veterans of the blanket business — Tedd Smith, John Hill and Tom Gibbs — has formed Biltmore Blanket Co., a new full-service blanket resource marketing a wide range of product produced in China by Biltmore's majority owner, Pac-Fung International.

Staging a fast comeback after the earlier collapse of Beacon Blankets, the trio of blanket veterans has regrouped with fresh financing and a new international partner and will be showing off its debut line this week at the Hotel Avalon, 16 East 32 St., New York.

Biltmore is working with international textiles magnate Hamen Fan, chairman and ceo of Pac-Fung International of Hong Kong, a major supplier to the U.S. market of comforter shells and duvet covers, feather and down products, sheets — and now blankets, through its majority stake in Biltmore. Pac-Fung is the Hong Kong-based parent of two U.S. subsidiaries, Pac-Fung Feather Company and Prestige Home Textiles, which is based in Los Angeles and markets a line of high-count sheets in cotton and cotton sateen.