For the past 12 years I have been to china many times buying home fashions bed sheet sets curtains, blankets towels and other popular fabrics. About 8 years ago I was shown by one of my suppliers a new textile which impressed me.. They told me it was bamboo. I had never seen such a smooth fabric with the best drape of any textile I had seen in my 40year career.
I asked this mill if they could make sheet sets in this bamboo they told me that they were working on it and would advise me at a later date. They were never able to duplicate the fabric but I managed to get them to give me a sample which I immediately took to another mill that I had been dealing with for many years. The owner and his assistant of this mill were textile university graduates and my thinking was if it is possible to make this fabric they would be best able to do it.
We worked back and forth for the next 10 months and ended up developing a 300 thread count sateen for sheets. The mill made up a few sets of bamboo bed sheets which I tested at home over several months. We found the sheets to be extremely comfortable much better than any of my high count cotton sets.
I approached a retailer in Canada with the sets. The buyer was very impressed and said that if the bed sheets washed and performed as I said they would I would have an order immediately. I gave her a sample set to test and within a few days she had placed her first order.
The first shipment sold out very fast and 6 years later the same sheets are still being sold in Quebec by this retailer.
I began by showing it to a friend who is one of Canada’s largest makers of intimate apparel. He was so intrigued by the bamboo he invited me to a meeting of his top sales staff from his U.S.A operation. The meeting went very well they were really interested in the bamboo.
One of the American sales people who was in on the meeting ended up calling me a few weeks later to tell me he wanted to sell the idea to Wal Mart USA. I agreed to make him samples and give him exclusivity in intimate apparel for the US. We worked on making him the perfect fabric for his needs and within 9 months we had orders from Wal mart.
We were required to do extensive independent laboratory testing to prove all the claims we were making about the bamboo and to also prove that the production of the yarn was not harmful to the environment.
Wal Mart would be testing it in 1000 stores across the US and had promised that if it did well they would place it in all their stores throughout the US.
From there we have offered and sold the bamboo in Canada and the USA for ladies and men’s intimate apparel, t-shirts, socks, underwear, yoga wear, sheet sets, towels, men’s shirts (knitted and woven) baby bunting bags, baby blankets, bibs, baby clothing, sweaters, leg warmers, heating bag and pad covers as well as other items.
