In yet another blow to the county’s once-booming textile industry, Culp Upholstery Fabrics has decided to shutter a distribution center that it has operated in Burlington.
The High Point-based manufacturer issued a news release Thursday that announced this facility’s closure as part of a “strategic restructuring” that the company launched in 2024.
According to the company’s news release, Culp’s upholstery fabrics division will shut down the distribution center which it currently leases at 2742-A Tucker Street Extension “as an initial step” in the restructuring process. The company would ultimately relocate this operation to a facility that it owns in Stokesdale and which now serves the company’s mattress fabrics division.
Culp’s news release makes no mention of how many employees would be affected by the Burlington facility’s closure and whether any of them will be relocated to Stokesdale or elsewhere. The news release is also mum on whether the company will maintain any office in Burlington after it closes the distribution center on Tucker Street.
In any event, the demise of this facility will more or less put a period on Culp’s nearly five decade presence in the Burlington area.
Founded in High Point in 1972, Culp made its first foray into Alamance County in 1978 when it established a plant to make upholstery prints plant along Faucette Road on the outskirts of Burlington. The company went on to open a weaving operating in Graham and a finishing plant along Burlington’s Mebane Street, which were still going strong in the mid ‘90s when other textile manufacturers were beginning to feel the pinch of globalization.
Culp’s news release notes that the company currently has manufacturing operations in Haiti, Turkey, Vietnam, and China, as well as the United States. The news release also alludes to a facility in Canada that’s slated for closure “within the next week” as part of the same restructuring process that has begun in Burlington.
The company acknowledges that it expects to save something on the order of $3 million once it completes the closure of the Burlington facility. It goes on to note that this move and “other integration initiatives” will “create a stronger and more nimble” company that’s better able to negotiate emerging challenges like tariffs and supply chain disruptions.
The company nevertheless spares a few thoughts for its workforce in Burlington as it looks forward to a brave new world of textile production.
“This is a substantial undertaking…[that] affects people and naturally involves some employment loss,” Iv Culp, the company’s president and CEO concedes in the news release. “We remain deeply grateful to the affected team members in Burlington and thank them for their dedication and contribution. We are committed to helping them make the best possible transition.”
