Summer 2012
The Global Home & Contract Furnishings Newspaper
Zinc Hits $10 Million, Opens Freestanding London Showroom; Top Kravet Brands Go Live in London; U&G Opens Lifestyle Centers Sipco News Network
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ONDON — “Zinc Textile already has created sales above $10,000,000 in 2011,” said Justin Marr, creative head of the Zinc brand, a considerable feat given that the brand only debuted in 2010. As a result, Zinc is the Romo owned brand that has enjoyed the most growth since its launch, Marr said. To celebrate, Romo Group threw a coming out party for its new freestanding Zinc
GARY AND BELINDA PRICE Materialised
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showroom here early in 2012. Romo now owns and operates five brands, namely Romo, Kirkby Design, Villa Nova, Mark Alexander and Zinc Textile. “Zinc’s modern, masculine, urban aesthetic lends itself to being rolled out into other product areas,” he said. For this reason, it was decided to give Zinc Textile its own space, where these developments can be showcased. The Zinc Textile design office is located on a mezzanine level
overlooking the showroom. Zinc still retains its s h o w r o o m within the Romo showroom in Chelsea Harbor Design Center in London. Marr joined the Romo Group Justin Marr, creative director of Zinc Brand in mid 2008 in (Continued on page 10) order to develop and launch Zinc.
See Kravet, U&G Showrooms on pages 18 & 20
Zinc London Showroom
New Line Develops Software Israel’s Nachik Grows To Prescreen Fabric Choices Globally, Double Digits Greatly Reduces Sampling Costs, Overall Savings Sipco News Network
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ANN GRAFTON GP & J Baker
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SCOTT WARWICK United
Page 13 Vlad Goldenberg
VYLAND, Pennsylvania — New Line Fabrics, a fabric converter specializing in export markets only, has developed a proprietary Idesign® software package that dramatically reduces the cost of sampling by almost 50 percent by allowing jobber customers to prescreen the exact products they want to order. There is a website called ‘idesigncenter.com’ for further information. “It cost well into six figures to develop the software, said Vlad Goldenberg, sales manager for New Line. “It would pay for the customer to buy it from us rather than to develop it himself,” he said. (Continued on page 8)
Sipco News Network
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EL AVIV, Israel — ‘Nachik’, an up and coming editeur and converter which supplies fabric to other editeurs and distributors worldwide has been experiencing double digit sales growth every year since it started in 2002, but Nachik Weberman himself admits it will be a challenge to grow at the same rate. Nachik Weberman “We are selling our collections to more export markets but our biggest growth is expected to be with our existing customers,” said Nachik, 44, and his partner/wife Susan, 41, married 18 years. (Continued on page 17)
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