Tales Of A Fourth Generation Textile Executive: Happy 85th Birthday To Our Parent Jaftex

I am writing this blog before the year ends, but posting it after, so bear with me.  As the year winds down, there is a lot to think about for next year.  What will my new year’s resolution be?  Last year I successfully gave up soda and will continue on that path. This year, I intend to get back in to shape by running.  What is your resolution?   What are my business goals? The answer to that is obvious, SELL MORE FABRIC.  As a company, our goal is to embrace technology more and complete the integration of The Blank Quilting Corp and maybe even buy another company if the opportunity arises. What are your goals, business or otherwise?

I am proud of how I managed to stick with this blog writing because at times it can be a real pain and a stress.  Believe it or not, I have written over 50 blah blah blogs up to this point.  Go me!  That is an achievement in itself, but the bigger achievement that I want to discuss is how our parent company, Jaftex, is turning 85 years old in 2015. That is 85 years of Fortunoff’s and fabric.  My brother Greg and I are fourth generationers and my dad is a third generationer.  The fifth generation is in place and on deck.  So thanks to great grandpa, Jacob A. Fortunoff….the JAF in Jaftex for starting this business and everyone else in between that contributed.

Speaking of Jaftex, I wanted to give you a list of all the companies that we have had over the years and some that we still have.  How many of them do you know? Probably not so many as most were involved with sleepwear and not quilting like today.

A.E. Nathan Co., Inc.

Andrea Knitting named after my aunt and ironically my mom has the same name.

A. Seril & Co.

Bertenn Textiles (A combo of my dad’s name, Robert, and his cousin Glenn.)

Blank Quilting

Chanteclaire 

E-D Knitting named after grandpa Everett and uncle Dan.

Fabric Editions

Henry Glass Fabrics

Jaftex Corp.

Merrivale

Natural Fabrics

Oxford Printing & Finishing, our textile printing mill.

Peter Pan Fabrics

Rogefort Textile Co., Inc.

Studioe Fabrics

Stylemaker

WOW!  16.  Crazy.

In celebration of the big 85, we are having a contest.  I will attach the flyer for the contest below, but here is the gist.  For every order that you place, from January 1, 2015 to September 30, 2015, that has 15 bolts for a single delivery (or multiples of 15 bolts) you will get a single entry to the raffle.  This applies to regular orders with our sales reps for any of our companies as well as drop ship orders from our distributor partners.  You must be in good credit standing with all of our companies to win.   Here is the kicker, the prizes.  First prize is 85 bolts of 44 inch cottons…say what?  Yup, that is for real.  This is around $15,000 at retail for the winning shop.  We are not messing around here.  The next top 3 prizes are credits for $2,500, $1,500 and $1,000 towards orders with any of our companies.  The bottom 6 prizes are $250 credits.

Thanks for celebrating with us!

Scott