D&WC: Tell us about your company.
Lawrence Wolfin, Vice President, Sales: Textol was started in 1965 as an adjunct to our original factory, which was a custom machine shop. We originally set up Textol to produce linear actuators, which is the motion we still use to run our machinery to sew and place snaps.
Textol was founded by Julius Wolfin and is now run by his sons, my bother Richard and I. We have 25 employees at our New Jersey facility in an 11,000-square-foot space, and we have another location in North Carolina. We have a sales force that covers the entire United States.
D&WC: What best describes your niche in the marketplace?
Wolfin: Our niche is that we respond to our customers with quality product and service. We ship same day if items are ordered by 3 p.m. Eastern time. There is always an owner available to talk to any customer, and we set up program buying for our largest customers.
D&WC: What window coverings products did you handle initially? What products do you handle today?
Wolfin: We originally produced snap tape and Roman and Austrian tapes on the linear actuator machines. Today we have a full-service workroom supply catalogue and another segment of our business that is industrial Velcro® sales. We are one of the largest distributors of Velcro products in the world.
D&WC: Who are your customers? What parts of the country do you service?
Wolfin: We service the entire United States and many foreign markets. We import and export to all places on the globe. We travel to Europe and Asia regularly to meet with vendors and customers alike.
To cover our market, we have five in-house sales people and four regional sales people throughout the country.
D&WC: What are some of the key factors involved in your growth and success?
Wolfin: Service, service and more service.
D&WC: What are your strengths in the marketplace?
Wolfin: We are responsive to and innovative for our customers. We have the ability to manufacture products that set us apart form our competitors. We have computerized all of our production equipment, which allows us to be much more efficient.
D&WC: Do you have a company Web site, and how is it used to communicate with customers?
Wolfin: We have three Web sites that have business-to-business and e-commerce availability. One site sells only Velcro, another sells only our trim line and the third has all of our drapery supplies on it.
We are fully computerized so that our Web orders integrate into our corporate software and accounting program.
D&WC: Do you educate your customers?
Wolfin: We have an on-staff consultant who runs her own workroom to answer customer questions. We also work closely with the Custom Home Furnishings Academy to bring products to market that the instructors utilize. We have recently brought in Skirtex after one of the teachers needed a source for this item.
D&WC: Where do you see yourself and your company five years from now? Are there additional areas within the industry that you would like to get involved in?
Wolfin: As we move forward we believe there is much growth potential in our industry and will constantly be adding to our product line to cater to customers who never thought about Textol before.
We constantly listen to our customers and have been adding to our product line with each issue of our catalogue.
For example, in cooperation with two partner companies we have introduced the Orb, which caters to every segment of the window covering industry.
