LCI Lacee to exit manufacturing business

Vinyl lace table cloth producer liquidating stock

Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 3/26/2001 12:00:00 AM

NEWARK, NJ -LCI Lacee is getting out of the manufacturing business after 40 years.

The company had produced vinyl lace table clothes, first in the United States and since 1990 from a factory it built in Guadalajara, Mexico.

The company sold the warehouse in June 2000 to Efka Plastic Guadalajara, a Mexican concern that continues to make the product under the Lacee brand. Lacee closed its New York office at 291 Fifth Avenue in January when its lease expired and has been operating out of its New Jersey warehouse at 1448 McArthur Highway in Newark, NJ.

Founder Harry Berger said Lacee is in the process of liquidating inventory from the warehouse and expects the process to be complete by late May. Berger will continue to distribute the line to customers in the United States, Europe and South America but will only sell by the container-load, he said.

Lacee grew out of polyethylene manufacturing business and originally sold to other manufacturers. It went public in 1971, reverting to a private company in 1984. In the early '90s it began to call on retail accounts directly, Berger said.

"I would just like to thank everybody for the cooperation that they gave me and I gave them," Berger added.