Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, August 9, 1993 TAG: 9308090113
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG SCHNEIDER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSTONE LENGTH: Long
Somehow, the stuff that broke Bobby Vinton's heart wound up crammed into Isabella Rosselini's mouth while Dennis Hopper got high on gas. "Blue Velvet" the romantic song became "Blue Velvet" the kinky movie.
Along the way came The Velvet Underground, Velveeta Cheese and Velvet Jones ("How to be a ho" on "Saturday Night Live").
Even the industry changed. Years ago, there were more than a dozen velvet mills in the United States. Now there are only three: one in Connecticut, one in South Carolina and one about 35 miles west of Petersburg in the town of Blackstone.
Frank Carlo's father brought The Velvet Textile Co. Inc. to Blackstone from Connecticut in 1955. The son made the business thrive, adding twice to the rambling brick building between a grain mill and three churches on Church Street.
Then, last fall, crisis hit. The U.S. velvet market was unexpectedly flooded with cheaper velvet from Korea. Carlo couldn't compete. By spring, his operation was running at less than half of capacity. He had to lay off about 60 of his 150 workers.
Just as quickly as the Koreans invaded, they retreated, and Carlo has hired most of his people back for the summer. But he expects the Koreans to return this fall. The U.S. government, he learned recently, will be slow to protect him, if it protects him at all.
So Carlo faces a prospect even the Depression didn't present his father: fear of extinction. A gloomy industry.
Blue velvet.
Rayon - American-made - arrives at Velvet Textile on long, skinny spools, looking like strands of kite twine, but soft as hair.
Volkswagen-size looms weave the rayon into a thick fabric that's smooth on both sides and has fibers sandwiched in the middle. A blade peels the sandwich apart, leaving two pieces of fabric that each have fuzz on one side. That's velvet.
The velvet is trimmed to make it finer. It's boiled clean, dyed, combed, treated for softness and water resistance, baked, cooled, inspected, rolled up and boxed.
It will be sold from the company's New York office or from its warehouse in Richmond, Ind. - "The casket capital of the United States," said plant manager Charles Funderburk.
Casket lining is one of the three main markets for velvet. In addition, "you got your wear and apparel trade - dresses, women's wear," said Carlo. "And you got your jewelry-box trade," plus a galaxy of such lesser uses as ribbons and upholstery.
Customers send the company a swatch in their desired color, and the company mixes a dye to match. Formulating the match is up to Ed Corum.
With the tattooed arms of a dock foreman and the sugary white hair of a mad professor, Corum, 61, is where the science of this business meets the art. He uses nothing but his eye and 37 years of experience to conjure up the proper shades, studying and studying the colors until they look right.
"I dream about 'em every night," he said. Unlike Bobby Vinton in the song, Corum dreams of more than one hue: "Ruby 2145, Ruby No. 9, Ruby 85, then you have just plain ruby . . . Dark Emerald, Light Emerald, your jungle greens . . . Spitfire Red, Fire Red, Shield Red, Marasca Red . . . Sometimes it really gets damn disgusting, believe me."
His own irises are a swirl of unidentifiable browns, greens and blues. His one relief is his home, which never has to be painted. "Thank goodness, I have aluminum siding," Corum said. "Beige siding."
About a quarter of all Velvet Textile's output is black, but in bewildering shades and tones. The fashion industry never seems to fall out of love with velvet formal wear, and lately, Carlo said, "all the velvets are hot.
"In fact, after the last big fashion show in Paris, they said - how the hell did they say that? - they said, `Velvet reigns.' Yeah, `Velvet reigns.' "
Frank Carlo, 58, does not seem like a man who has ever been to a big fashion show in Paris. He leaves that to his New York staff.
Gray hair slicked straight back, wearing a casual synthetic-fabric shirt tucked into dress pants, Carlo is the picture of a gruff captain of industry. He clicks a ballpoint pen impatiently. His office walls are unadorned. He sits, broad-shouldered, behind a two-ZIP-code desk that makes his presence enormous even though, standing, he is diminutive.
His father started the business in New Haven, Conn., in 1933. Carlo grew up in it, always working in management. Now his son, daughter and son-in-law are poised to carry on. If the business survives.
"As a matter of fact, we were having a good year last year, then the Koreans came in here pretty hot and heavy in the last quarter," Carlo said.
Past threats from Japanese and German velvet mills petered out as wages rose in those countries, making their product too expensive to compete with domestic. But Carlo doesn't know what to make of the Koreans.
They first appeared a couple of years ago. A U.S. velvet mill closed - leaving only the current three - and instead of getting a big boost from his ex-competitor's business, Carlo saw only a slight bump in sales. Korean manufacturers had picked up the slack.
"We didn't really notice it at first, then everywhere you went, you saw them," Carlo said. "I went to Cloth World over in Petersburg the other day, for instance, and I saw 10 hangers hanging on a rack with velvet on them. Seven of them were Korean, three of them were domestic. So all of a sudden, here they are, starting to get a foothold, and each year it's getting a little bit more, a little bit more."
Besides the economics, there's a principle that bothers Carlo. The U.S. lost the automotive industry to foreign competition, he said, and steel and electronics. Now, velvet? Will a waterbed-spread look the same, a customized van be as stylish, a painting of Elvis or JFK mean as much on foreign velvet?
The prospect has stiffened more than a few backbones in Blackstone, where the economic development chairman recently was persuaded to put off his retirement so he could help Velvet Textile find solutions.
Mill workers are nervous. "This year for the first time I actually feared the plant would close," said Robert Daniel Jr., 51, who followed his parents to Velvet Textile and whose son is following him. "I think anybody but Carlo would have shut down. He hangs on like a bulldog."
Carlo has taken the fight to his congressman, U.S. Rep. Norman Sisisky, D-Petersburg.
Last week, Sisisky and counterparts in South Carolina and Connecticut arranged a meeting between federal commerce officials and the last U.S. velvet makers. Carlo came away unreassured.
"How do you convince somebody else? How do you convince a politician?" he asked. The way business is booming now, how could he explain that the foreign competition - from a country with low wages and, for all he knows, government subsidy - is just waiting to garrote what used to be a proud American industry?
"It's like a stalking thing, you know?" Carlo said. "He stalks you for a couple months, you go complain to the law, the law says, `He hasn't done nothing yet.' Well, when the son of a ----- kills me, then it's too late."
by CNB