Kaplan, Ziccardi Create Unisource
August 14, 2001
New York — Burt Kaplan and Susan Ziccardi have established Unisource Group, a textile marketing services group.
"Call us a converter if you want," Kaplan said. "Building a brand and building customer confidence in that brand is what Unisource is all about. We plan to offer consistency, quality and product integrity. We will try to create a super source of product created by us to meet today's needs, not yesterday's.
"You have to be creative and think outside of the box. The textiles industry won't go back to the way it was."
Kaplan was the former president of Cone Decorative Fabrics and Ziccardi was the design director prior to this new venture. Kaplan was a vice president of Richloom Fabrics Group prior to joining Cone one year ago. Richloom purchased some of the assets of Cone Decorative Fabrics, specifically what was the converting business of John Wolf Fabrics on August 10 for $9 million.
"Working at Cone was the best year of my life," Kaplan said. "I had to take a money losing operation and turn it around. I'm proud of the fact that Cone was able to get Richloom to buy it." Cone lost almost $5 million on the converting business this year on fabric converting sales of an estimated $35 million. Kaplan and Ziccardi expect to be at Decosit in September.
"Call us a converter if you want," Kaplan said. "Building a brand and building customer confidence in that brand is what Unisource is all about. We plan to offer consistency, quality and product integrity. We will try to create a super source of product created by us to meet today's needs, not yesterday's.
"You have to be creative and think outside of the box. The textiles industry won't go back to the way it was."
Kaplan was the former president of Cone Decorative Fabrics and Ziccardi was the design director prior to this new venture. Kaplan was a vice president of Richloom Fabrics Group prior to joining Cone one year ago. Richloom purchased some of the assets of Cone Decorative Fabrics, specifically what was the converting business of John Wolf Fabrics on August 10 for $9 million.
"Working at Cone was the best year of my life," Kaplan said. "I had to take a money losing operation and turn it around. I'm proud of the fact that Cone was able to get Richloom to buy it." Cone lost almost $5 million on the converting business this year on fabric converting sales of an estimated $35 million. Kaplan and Ziccardi expect to be at Decosit in September.
