TEXTILES.ORG
Ultrafabrics, a high-performance fabric provider based in Tarrytown, N.Y., announced it is celebrating 25 years of business.
“We began with a vision that this leather alternative could be a game changer and we believed in its quality. We knew if we were strategic and built the company based on our values, we could grow it exponentially, and we haven’t looked back,” says Danielle Boecker-Primack, co-founder of Ultrafabrics.
“We trusted our partnership with the mill in Japan and when you have this level of trust, you can confidently build solutions for clients, 1 yard of fabric at a time,” says Clay Rosenberg, co-founder of Ultrafabrics.
The company’s commitment to maintaining long-term relationships with clients and staff has allowed the company to expand to 11 different markets. The brand has cultivated many industry partnerships, MillerKnoll Andreu World and Kimball, to automotive brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Lotus, aviation and aerospace with JetBlue, Virgin Galactic, and NASA as well as wearable fashion Google Fitbit. The company was also recognized as a 2024 Steelcase Carbon Reduction Leader.
Since it was founded in 1999, Ultrafabrics has sold over 40.6 million yards of fabric—this output is set to hit 45.2 million yards by the end of this year. In its first year of trading, the company reported revenues of $9.3 million and in 2024 revenue is expected to reach $125 million.
For the last four years, Ultrafabrics has had an external consultant working closely with the Japanese team researching innovations like fabric dyes from food waste such as coffee and matcha tea, and new bio-based inputs.
“The laboratory took over five years to develop Volar Bio, our first bio-based line with 29% bio-based composition, and we’ve recently launched a bio-based aviation construction called AV Bio, another industry first. This year we are proud to announce Volar Bio now has a 66% mix of recycled, rapidly renewable and bio-based content. These are just a small fraction of breakthroughs from the research and development team,” says Boecker-Primack of Ultrafabrics’ manufacturing mill in Japan.
“The mill has seen some positive results experimenting with crushed scallop shells as a potential bio-based ingredient. These initial positive results will continue to support our innovation roadmap, and the data-gathering and experimentation is imperative to our commitment to a sustainable future,” says Rosenberg.