Dian Austin Launches Couture Home
By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 6/19/2006
Oceanside, Calif. — Industry veteran Dian Austin has started up a new business: Dian Austin Couture Home. The venture will offer exclusive programs in several home textiles categories for retail, catalog and hospitality accounts as well as furniture manufacturers, showrooms and retail stores.
Dian Austin Couture Home is positioned to create “leading edge, innovative designs with unique details” for bedding, decorative pillows, throws and tabletop. Austin said she established the company “to attract elite, fashion-forward customers who desire to decorate their homes with sophisticated, elegant furnishings of superb luxury quality. I shall present my new collection on the highest level, elevating and distancing it from the standard luxury bedding lines available today.”
Austin is joined in the company by her husband Douglas Fencl, cfo, who will oversee the financial and operational end of the business. Fencl was a partner in the Austin Horn Collection business until its sale in 2003.
Eva Radabaugh has been appointed executive vp, sales and marketing. She formerly held various positions for Austin Horn Collection from 1996 to 2004, involved with customer service and marketing.
Austin founded Austin Horn Collection in 1990, then sold it to the AR Group, Inc. in November 2003. Recently the assets of Austin Horn Collection were purchased through a bank sale by Pacific Coast Home Furnishings/Sherry Kline Bedding.
Prior to opening Austin Horn Collection, Dian had a career in fashion merchandising. She began in fashion apparel with Federated Department Stores as a buyer. She then went to Robinson's Department Stores as a merchandise manager of better sportswear and later moved to New York, working for prominent apparel manufacturers as vp of merchandising.
