NEW YORK, New York — Richloom Fabrics Group  has named Nolan Mitchell Vice President of Sales and Merchandising, Furniture Division for its mid level and mass market driven upholstery collections.

With his appointment, it looks like Richloom is taking a more active role in bringing out new brands for commodity products. R-Style, a successful upholstery brand wil now be joined by R-Studio.

“Richloom also named ten year veteran Lisa Ayers, VP of Upholstery Design. Lisa and her team came up with new styles of presentations for both the R-Style and R-Studio lines with the goal of captivating buyers’ attention in quick visual snapshots.  We can’t wait to unleash this to our customers at Showtime.” 

To head the charge here, Mitchell has moved to New York from Shanghai.  

He reports to Jim Richman, President of Richloom. Mitchell was most recently VP Asian Operations of Richloom’s Shanghai office. He held that post based in Shanghai for five years and prior to that, he spent 15 years in the private label casegoods industry.

At the same time, Kerry Lanzit replaces Nolan in the Shanghai  office  where his title is General Manager of Asian Operations.

Overall, Mitchell said that Richloom upholstery has been holding its own this year  in a tough business climate. “We’ve been working smarter than ever before.

The bulk of Richloom’s upholstery under its R-Style brand is sourced in China, namely solids and jacquard but prints are created in the USA.

“There is growth in prints,” Mitchell pointed out.

R-Studio, a new brand in Richloom’s upholstery branch will be developed by Mitchell who feels that commodity bodycloths for the motion, sectional and stationary furniture business can achieve greater growth in the future. Richloom expects to bring out more product, 25 new designs in fact, under the R-Studio umbrella beginning at December Showtime.

“We’re also going to take a different approach in how we present fabrics at Showtime. This will include social media as a way to dramatically attract the buyer’s attention. Richloom’s complete upholstery offering will be coordinated to the solids in R-Studio,” Mitchell explained.

Although Mitchell had been living in Shanghai, he has attended Showtime for the past five years so he is not new to this event. He will be in evidence at Showtime this December.

In other developments for the company, a spokesman pointed to its second dedicated website in SolariumFabrics.com; the first site was dedicated to Richloom Contract.com.