NEW YORK–Burlington House, a name not seen at retail for several years, is about to attempt a comeback.
As the result of a deal signed in April, Li & Fung USA’s home fashions division, Homestead, acquired the rights to the Burlington House name from International Textile Group. Homestead now plans to introduce a patented Burlington House collection of “quality home fashions,” according to a Homestead statement.
“This is a master license,” said David Greenstein, president of the Homestead division. “The collection will include top-of-the-bed products, bath products, window treatments and non-soft-home items. The latter could perhaps include home decor, dining and tabletop collections.”
Burlington House will be among a number of major home textiles labels to attempt a return to the marketplace. Since last year, traditional home fashions names such as Royal Velvet, Cannon and Fieldcrest have reappeared on retailer shelves after several years in textiles limbo.
As a home textiles name, Burlington House has almost as much tradition as these other labels. Burlington Industries, the parent company of Burlington House, was founded in 1923 and had been one of the nation’s top fabric suppliers throughout the ensuing decades. Burlington began to offer Burlington House products about 30 years ago. According to Don Johnson, now executive vice president of Arley and a longtime executive with Burlington House, the company was one of the first to offer a designer line of bedding, debuting the Laura Ashley-licensed program about 25 years ago.
“When Burlington started its domestics division, it was considered among the major mills,” Johnson recalled. “The only things they didn’t do like the other mills were mass sheets and mass towels.” Burlington sold this division to WestPoint Stevens (now WestPoint Home) about 20 years ago, but retained the window treatments, upholstery fabrics and mattress ticking lines under Burlington House.
“We were very big in window, especially in thermal-backed drapes,” Johnson said. In the early 1990s, the company decided to get back into the bed-ensembles market, and did so by offering ensembles in printed jacquards, the fabrics the company specialized in for window coverings, upholstery and mattress ticking. “This was when the business really exploded,” Johnson said. “Burlington had a million different jacquards, and all we had to do was marrying the right jacquard to the right print.” The collections eventually appeared in specialty stores and national-chain department stores, he added.
Although business at Burlington House was good, the parent, Burlington Industries, faced competitive problems in its other businesses, especially apparel fabrics, due largely to competition from abroad. Even though the finished-textiles business was still going strong, Burlington Industries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2001.
According to J. Derrell Rice, current president of Burlington House under ITG, Burlington House products achieved annual sales of from $140 million to $150 million in 2002. That year, however, Burlington Industries sold the home textiles business to Springs Industries, but kept the Burlington House brands, which it licensed out to Springs.
The following year, WL Ross & Co., the private-equity firm led by investor Wilbur Ross, purchased both Burlington Industries and Cone Mills. With these two companies, WL Ross formed ITG in 2004. Meanwhile, Springs’ rights to the Burlington House brands expired in 2007, Rice said.
“The heritage and appeal of Burlington House transcends generations,” Rice said. And it’s that heritage and appeal that, Homestead is hoping, will attract consumers with long memories back to the name.
According to Johnson, Homestead has work ahead to rekindle interest in the brand. “It hasn’t been out in the public for some time,” he said. “Our surveys [from the 1990s] showed that to consumers, the name stood for good quality and fashion. But it will need advertising and promoting to exploit it. It will need advertising, especially in shelter magazines.”
Thus far, no date has been set for a launch of the collections. — David Gill