Standard Fiber LLC has acquired the U.S. mattress fabric business of trading company Elfa International Inc. Standard Fiber is a 20-year-old, privately held international trading company with operational headquarters in Burlingame, California. Its legal registration is in Las Vegas, where it also has a distribution center. The company has relationships with more than 100 textile mills — mostly in China, but also in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Vietnam — where the home textiles and sewn products it sells are manufactured under contract.
Standard Fiber Home Textiles Co. Ltd., based in Shanghai, is owned by Standard Fiber LLC and manages the company’s China operations.
The Elfa purchase included warehousing in Elkhart, Indiana, and Marion, North Carolina, and a design studio in Charlotte, North Carolina. Standard Fiber also is adding a ticking showroom and idea center at its Las Vegas location.
Elfa, which relocated its headquarters from New York to Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on Aug. 1, continues to sell ticking and a range of other goods in Central and South America, said its principal Edward Assile.
Standard Fiber has retained members of the Elfa sales and design team in the United States, including sales executive Brian Gorlo, who now is Standard Fiber’s executive vice president of sales for ticking.
“About half of our business is finished home textiles, including top-of-bed items, bath textiles, pet beds and furniture protectors,” said Sandy Gray, Standard Fiber LLC chief executive officer. “The other half is comprised of value-added home textile components and raw materials supplied to manufacturers in the U.S. and other countries, such as pillow shells and covers, topper covers, roll goods, polyester and natural fills, and zippered mattress covers. We are the world’s largest producer of pillow components at 80-plus million units per year.
“We’ve been producing and supplying zippered mattress covers for four years — last year we supplied over 250,000 mattress covers to the U.S. — and the acquisition of Elfa extends our offerings for mattress manufacturers to include domestic design capabilities and the distribution of roll-stock fabrics. The Elfa team has built a terrific business designing and supplying fabric to North American mattress manufacturers. As they join Standard Fiber, we look forward to accelerating that growth via deeper supply resources and expanded product development, while bringing more innovation to the textile side of the sleep industry.”
Gorlo added: “With the addition of Standard Fiber’s resources and global infrastructure behind us, we’re excited to shift into a higher gear to provide more value, service and product breadth to our expanding customer base of mattress manufacturers.”
