March 29, 2024

profile: Valley Forge Fabrics

Seamless Transition for Valley Forge Fabrics

Once, fire-safety rules drove business to the Pompano Beach company that' s become the world's largest supplier of fabric to hotels. The firm now expects environmental concerns to assure its future.

Cynthia Barnett | 9/1/2009
Dobin Family
Michael and Diana Dobin (with parents Daniel and Judy) play major roles in the family business. They have introduced new product lines and new corporate policies, such as mandatory recycling. [Photo: Eileen Escarda]

To wrap your mind around the business of Valley Forge Fabrics, take a look at the hotel room pictured below. Add it all up, and furnishing a typical upscale hotel room requires about 170 yards of fabric. At $6 to $36 a yard, that means each room costs between $1,000 and $6,100 to drape, sheet and upholster.

And the sales cycle is short: Many hotel managers change the bedding fabrics every 18 months or so to keep their rooms looking modern and new. “In the scheme of things that go into a hotel room, we are cheaper than the carpet, and we are cheaper than the furniture,” says Diana Dobin, a senior vice president at Valley Forge. “So when they need to freshen up the room, we are the least expensive thing they can do.”


Design librarian Aran Swart catalogs the company’s fabric swatches. Valley Forge employs 100 in south Florida — about half of the workers are designers.? [Photo: Eileen Escarda]

As the lodging industry has grown — there are now nearly 4.5 million hotel rooms in the U.S. alone — Valley Forge’s mom-and-pop-and-kids operation has grown right along with it to become the world’s largest supplier of decorative fabrics to hotels. Last year, the company, founded in 1977 by Dobin’s parents, Daniel and Judy Dobin, sold more than 10 million yards of fabric.

Thirty years ago, the couple were struggling to support themselves and three children — two more came later — selling fabric for velvet curtains in the New York area. Their specialty, fire-resistant velvets required for curtains in theaters, began to attract orders from Las Vegas after a 1980 fire at the MGM Grand killed 87 people. The deaths prompted an overhaul of hotel fire-safety codes in the city that spread throughout Nevada and the nation.

Filling orders for Vegas velvet, the Dobins saw that no firms were positioned to meet hotels’ enormous demand for fabric. Their decision to focus on the hospitality niche sewed up the company’s success. The Dobins began making upholstery fabrics, specifically the intricately woven jacquards often used in hotel rooms. They also became experts in hotel fire codes, which differed depending on state and local government rules, so they could advise hotel chains doing business in different parts of the country.

In 1992, Daniel and Judy moved their family and business from New York to Broward County. They wanted to escape the cold and their two-hour daily commute into the city and be closer to their parents, who had retired to Florida. Ten employees made the move south, too. Diana, the oldest of the Dobins’ five children, and brother Michael, also a senior vice president, went to work for the company straight out of college, opening the company’s first international offices in the mid-1990s. (Of the remaining Dobin siblings, one sister is a developer, while two are still in college.)

Fabric Demand: Typical upscale hotel roomSawgrass Mills

Tags: Dining & Travel

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