SHOWTIME® FEATURE
GENERATION THESE TEXTILE INDUSTRY LEADERS CARRY THE FAMILY TORCH WHILE FORGING A BOLD FUTURE By Kim D. Shaver
Representing the second, third and even fourth generations of leadership in their families’ businesses, the next era of textile industry leaders is a reservoir of talent, energy and vision. A bridge from the past to the future, they’re inspired by the legacy and wisdom of their elders, while embracing multigenerational collaboration that will advance their companies and the home textiles industry into the future.
SCOTT KAHAN New business development, Regal Fabrics | Age 35
Tell us about your company and role. My grandparents, Herb and Arlene Kahan founded Boston-based Regal Fabrics in 1987, and I joined three years ago. While I do a little bit of everything, including operations, customer relations and marketing, my position is business development. What new innovations and initiatives have you been involved in at your company? The most exciting initiative I’ve been involved in was the due diligence, purchase and integration of a portion of the Diversitex business. The acquisition enabled us to expand into an exciting new collection of casual lifestyle fabrics called Kindred, in natural fibers like cotton, linens, hemp and recycled yarns with a focus on sustainability. What recent achievements or improvements are you most proud of? In an effort to offer faster service turnaround and more custom collaboration, we have begun doing short-order custom digital printing production in Boston on 24 different base cloths we carry. In the past, we did all our digital printing offshore and it took at least 10 days to get a strike-off for approval. Now that we are doing it domestically, we can turn it around in 24 to 48 hours.
22
www.InternationalTextileAlliance.org/Showtime
