Curtain and Linen Mills (U.S.) — NAICS 314120

An investor's primer for public-market and private investors.

1. Overview

"Curtain and Linen Mills" is the U.S. government's label for the plants that cut, sew, finish, and package finished household textiles — sheets, pillowcases, comforters and bedspreads, towels, curtains and draperies, tablecloths, napkins, and shower curtains — out of fabric they buy from someone else [1]. It is the last, labor-intensive step that turns a roll of cloth into the soft goods you actually put on a bed, window, or table.

Two things define this industry for an investor. First, it is small and shrinking as a domestic manufacturing base: U.S. establishments in this code produced about $3.3 billion of shipments in 2022, representing approximately $1.76 billion of value added (the domestic production contribution after intermediate inputs) [2][3]. Second, it sits inside a much larger consumer market — Americans buy an estimated ~$25 billion of home textiles a year [4] — the great majority of which is imported, mostly from India and China. USITC reported $15.4 billion of U.S. home-furnishing textile imports in 2021, up 33% from 2020 [5]. The domestic mills are a thin, price-pressured sliver of a category that has largely moved offshore.

Ways to get exposure. Public-market investors have almost no pure U.S.-listed play; the closest is small-cap Crown Crafts, plus adjacent fabric-maker Culp. The largest listed pure-plays trade in India (Welspun Living, Trident, Indo Count), which supply a dominant share of what U.S. retailers sell [6][7][8]. Icahn Enterprises (IEP) wholly owns WestPoint Home, providing diluted exposure through a diversified holding company [9]. Private investors mostly meet this industry through privately held domestic makers (WestPoint Home, Standard Textile, 1888 Mills, American Textile Company) and through direct-to-consumer bedding brands. This is, overwhelmingly, a private, low-margin, contract-manufacturing business.

2. What it is and how it's structured

Scope. NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code 314120 covers establishments primarily engaged in making household textile products from purchased fabric — bedspreads and bed sets, sheets and pillowcases, non-electric blankets, curtains and draperies, towels, table linens, and shower curtains, on a stock or custom basis [1]. The defining feature is "from purchased materials": these are converters and cut-and-sew operations, not the mills that weave or knit the cloth.

The phrase "from purchased materials" is economically important. A typical establishment buys fabric, batting, filling, trim or other prepared material and converts it through spreading, cutting, sewing, hemming, quilting, filling, finishing, inspection, packaging and distribution [10]. Companies may design products, procure finished goods offshore, license brands and operate distribution centers alongside domestic conversion plants. Products reach consumers through mass merchants, department and off-price stores, home specialists, e-commerce and direct-to-consumer brands. Institutional channels — hotels, hospitals, nursing facilities, laundries, cruise lines and government procurement — buy more standardized sheets, towels, pillows, protectors and draperies, with greater emphasis on laundering life, availability and total cost per use [10][11].

What it excludes (and where those activities live):

• Weaving the base cloth → 313210 Broadwoven Fabric Mills.
• Knitting fabric, including lace curtains on lace machines → 313240 Knit Fabric Mills.
• Textile bags, wardrobe and laundry bags, canvas goods → 314910 Textile Bag and Canvas Mills.
• Blinds and shades, canvas awnings, paper tablecloths → excluded from 314120.
• Mops → 339994 Broom, Brush, and Mop Manufacturing [1].

So the fabric in a sheet is made upstream (313), and the finished sheet is made here (314120). Mattresses themselves are furniture (337910), and upholstered-furniture and mattress-ticking fabrics are fabric-mill output (Culp's business), not finished household textiles.

Ownership mix. The domestic industry is a mix of (a) a handful of surviving mid-size and large private manufacturers, many focused on institutional linens (hotels, hospitals) where speed, service, and durability matter more than the lowest unit price; (b) many small custom workrooms making drapery and decorative goods; and (c) marketing/converting arms of large global — often Indian or Brazilian — textile groups. Publicly traded ownership is rare and mostly foreign-listed.

3. How big it is

Federal statistics for the domestic industry (our ground-truth figures):

Establishment size distribution. The industry is highly skewed toward small operations: Census reported 542 establishments with fewer than five employees, 211 with five to nine, and 143 with ten to nineteen. Thus 896 establishments — 84.6% — had fewer than twenty employees. At the other end, Census showed 35 establishments with 100–249 employees and six with 250–499 [12]. Legal form reinforces the privately held character: Census classified 631 establishments as S corporations, 236 as C corporations or other corporate forms, 122 as individual proprietorships, and 70 as partnerships in 2023 [12].

Concentration is low — this is a fragmented domestic industry. The largest four firms made 21.1% of shipments, the top eight 32.2%, the top twenty 52.3%, and the top fifty 67.3%; the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI, a standard 0–10,000 concentration gauge) was just 192.1 [2]. For reference, U.S. antitrust agencies treat a market below ~1,500 as unconcentrated — so no single domestic maker dominates. (However, establishment fragmentation does not necessarily mean low commercial concentration: national mass-retail programs may still be concentrated among a smaller group of branded or private-label suppliers while hundreds of small custom workrooms coexist.)

The undercount caveat — important here. These figures count only U.S.-based employer plants that finish household textiles. They do not capture the imported curtains and linens that make up the bulk of what Americans buy — industry analysts put imports at the overwhelming majority (on the order of 90%+) of home textiles sold in the U.S. [14][6]. A single Indian supplier, Welspun, accounts for roughly 45% of U.S. towel imports and 59% of U.S. sheet imports by recent trade data [6]. So the ~$3.3 billion domestic figure understates the category's economic footprint by a wide margin — most of the value is created offshore and imported. Federal counts also likely under-represent tiny custom-drapery and workroom operators (sole proprietors with no employees fall outside the employer-based County Business Patterns count).

4. The investable universe

There is no large, pure U.S.-listed home-textiles manufacturer. The clean plays are small-caps and foreign listings.

Major private / other owners (U.S. market):

• WestPoint Home — owned by Icahn Enterprises; centuries-old sheet, towel, and comforter maker (Grand Patrician, Martex, Vellux, Utica brands); operates a U.S. cut-and-sew/filled-goods plant in Florida but owns sheet-manufacturing in Bahrain and uses global partners [9][11].
• Springs Global (Coteminas) — Brazil-based owner of the Springmaid and legacy Wamsutta lines; large U.S. footprint [18].
• Standard Textile (Cincinnati, private) — hospitality and healthcare linens; describes itself as the only remaining commercial towel-and-sheeting manufacturer in the U.S. [19].
• 1888 Mills (Georgia, private) — operates the largest remaining U.S. towel mill in Griffin, Georgia, employing more than 200 people, serving retail, hospitality, and healthcare [20][21].
• American Textile Company (private) — mattress and pillow protection (AllerEase, Tranquility); plus Pacific Coast Feather, DOWNLITE, Hollander in pillows/comforters; licensed Sealy and Tempur-Pedic products; more than 1,000 associates globally with U.S. manufacturing in Georgia, Texas, and Utah [22][23].
• Direct-to-consumer brands — Brooklinen, Boll & Branch, Parachute — design-and-marketing companies that source finished goods, mostly imported.

Bottom line for stock pickers: exposure is thin, and the biggest listed operators are Indian companies reached through international brokerage access to the NSE/BSE.

5. How the money works

This is a contract cut-and-sew converter business, and its economics look nothing like a rate-regulated or asset-heavy industry. Owners make money by:

• Buying fabric and selling finished goods at a spread. Gross margins are thin because the value added — cutting, hemming, sewing, finishing, packaging — is commoditized. Cotton, polyester, and freight are the dominant input costs [24][25]. Recent disclosed margins: WestPoint Home earned an 18% gross margin in 2025 (down from 23% in 2024), with IEP attributing the decline to lower retail demand, higher material costs, and unfavorable manufacturing variances [9]. Crown Crafts reported a 24.4% gross margin in FY2025 (down from 26.2%), pressured by increased royalties, facility rent, and China tariffs [16].
• Winning and holding retailer programs. The customers are a concentrated set of powerful buyers — Walmart, Target, Amazon, Costco, off-price chains, and hospitality/healthcare distributors. Landing a private-label program drives volume; losing one is a cliff. That buyer power caps pricing. Crown Crafts' disclosure illustrates the risk: Walmart and Amazon represented 47% and 19% of gross sales, respectively, and licensed products represented 50% of sales [16].
• Running plants full. As in any manufacturing, capacity utilization and inventory turns make or break the P&L; fixed costs are spread over volume, and slow-moving seasonal inventory (holiday, back-to-college) ties up cash.
• Mix and branding. The escape from pure commodity pricing is premium/decorative and branded product (licensed names, designer collections) or institutional contracts where durability, laundering performance, and reliable domestic supply command a better price — this is why the healthiest domestic survivors concentrate on hotel and hospital linens and on custom decorative work.

Principal cost drivers are purchased fabric or finished components; cotton, polyester and filling materials; direct sewing and finishing labor; freight and warehousing; utilities; packaging; tariffs and duties; retailer allowances; royalties; and inventory markdowns. Fashion colors, sizes and licensed designs create SKU proliferation and obsolescence risk.

The two viable domestic niches are therefore (1) institutional/hospitality/healthcare linens, where fast turnaround, service, "buy-American" preferences, and toughness matter more than the lowest unit price; and (2) custom decorative and premium DTC, where design and speed beat container shipping from Asia. Everything in between — basic commodity sheets and towels for mass retail — has largely moved offshore.

6. What drives demand

• Housing activity. Existing-home sales, household formation, and new-home completions move people into rooms that need dressing. Sluggish home turnover and a soft homeownership rate have suppressed replacement demand [14].
• Consumer discretionary spending and confidence. Sheets, towels, and curtains are replaced when budgets allow; the category is cyclical and trades down in downturns. IEP disclosure describes the WestPoint Home business as strongly influenced by retail consumer spending [9].
• Redecorating and replacement cycles. Wear-out and refresh — plus seasonal resets — drive steady baseline volume.
• Hospitality and healthcare utilization. For institutional makers, hotel occupancy/RevPAR and hospital patient volumes set linen demand and replacement rates.
• Channel shift and e-commerce. DTC and marketplace growth reshuffle who captures the margin.

Offshoring has changed domestic plants' role. WestPoint explicitly moved most manufacturing to lower-cost overseas plants in recent decades [26]. Domestic capacity is therefore increasingly concentrated in quick-response finishing, bulky filled goods where freight matters, institutional or government programs, custom work and products marketed on U.S. origin.

Automation is a countervailing trend. American Textile announced investments in robotics and AI-enabled systems intended to accelerate production and improve consistency [27]. Automation can improve filling, quilting, material handling, inspection and packaging, but flexible sewing and custom work remain labor-intensive.

7. Regulation

Home textiles are lightly regulated as products but exposed to safety, labeling, trade, and emerging chemical rules:

• Flammability (CPSC). The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) enforces the Flammable Fabrics Act. Relevant standards include mattresses and mattress pads (16 C.F.R. Part 1632, smoldering) and, for juvenile sleep and loungewear that some bedding makers touch, children's sleepwear (16 C.F.R. Parts 1615/1616) [28][29].
• Labeling (FTC). The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) requires fiber-content and country-of-origin labeling (Textile Fiber Products Identification Act) and care labeling. FTC guidance expressly covers sheets, blankets, curtains, draperies, table linens and towels [30][31].
• Children's products (CPSIA). Items marketed for infants/toddlers face Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act lead, phthalate, and testing requirements — central to Crown Crafts' segment.
• Trade policy — the big swing factor. Because the category is import-dominated, tariffs matter enormously. Section 301 tariffs cover roughly 70% of textile/apparel imports from China [32], and in 2025 the U.S. suspended the "de minimis" ($800 duty-free) exemption — first for China (May 2025), then all countries (August 2025), continued into 2026 [33][34][35]. That raises landed costs on low-value import shipments and reshuffles sourcing toward India, Vietnam, and elsewhere.
• Forced-labor rules. The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) requires cotton-sourcing diligence to avoid Xinjiang-linked inputs. CBP says importers must exercise reasonable care and understand where and how goods are produced throughout their supply chains; detained merchandise may require detailed evidence of admissibility. Cotton's multi-stage path through ginning, spinning, weaving, finishing and sewing makes traceability particularly demanding [36].
• PFAS reporting (emerging). For stain-, water- or oil-resistant textiles, EPA's TSCA rule covers manufacturers and importers of PFAS and PFAS-containing articles. The current deadlines are October 13, 2026 for most manufacturers and April 13, 2027 for small businesses reporting solely as importers of PFAS-containing articles [37].

8. Competitive dynamics and consolidation

The dominant force is import competition. Decades of offshoring hollowed out U.S. finished-textile production; dozens of textile mills have closed in recent years, and revenue for the broader domestic textile-mill sector has declined [14][38]. USITC notes that downstream textile and apparel activities are labor-intensive and that U.S. labor costs are materially higher than in many producing countries; domestic plants require automation, proximity, service, compliance, origin preferences or differentiated products to offset that disadvantage [39]. Domestically the field is fragmented (HHI ~192) [2], but globally it is concentrated among a few vertically integrated Asian giants — Welspun, Trident, and Indo Count in India — that supply most U.S. retail shelf space [6][7][8].

Consolidation shows up in three ways: (1) survivor scale among the few remaining U.S. mills (Standard Textile, 1888 Mills, WestPoint); (2) foreign acquisition of U.S. brands — Indo Count buying Wamsutta in 2024 is the template — as Asian makers move up into branding and distribution [8]; and (3) DTC entrants (Brooklinen, Boll & Branch) capturing premium margin without owning plants. Retailer bargaining power (Walmart/Target/Amazon) remains the ceiling on everyone's profitability.

9. Risks

• Import and currency competition. Low-cost Asian supply structurally caps domestic pricing and volume; a stronger dollar deepens the disadvantage.
• Trade-policy whipsaw — cuts both ways. Tariffs can protect domestic makers, but many U.S. converters buy imported fabric, so the same tariffs and the de minimis suspension raise their input costs [33][35].
• Input and freight volatility. Cotton and polyester prices and ocean freight drive margins; cotton has been soft (near ~60–65¢/lb in 2025–26) [24][25], which helps costs but signals weak demand.
• Customer concentration and private-label pressure. A few mega-retailers dominate distribution and push margins down. Crown Crafts' two largest customers represented 66% of fiscal-2025 gross sales, and licensed products represented 50% — illustrating the negotiating and program-renewal risk borne by branded suppliers [16].
• Cyclicality. Housing turnover and discretionary spending swings hit demand directly.
• Labor and low pricing power. Sewing is labor-intensive; domestic labor cost and availability strain the model, and commodity products offer little room to pass through cost.
• Sourcing/ESG compliance. Forced-labor (UFLPA) and sustainability scrutiny raise diligence costs and headline risk [36].
• PFAS chemical and reporting exposure. Stain- or water-resistant finishes may trigger EPA reporting requirements and evolving state restrictions [37].
• Substitution. Blinds and shades substitute for curtains; paper or disposable products substitute for some table and institutional linens; low-cost imported finished goods substitute for domestic conversion.

10. How to invest and the outlook

Public-market routes. Direct exposure is limited. Crown Crafts (CRWS) is the closest U.S.-listed pure-play but is small and juvenile-focused [15]; Culp (CULP) offers adjacent exposure to home-textile fabrics (mattress ticking, upholstery), not finished linens [17]. Icahn Enterprises (IEP) owns WestPoint Home, but that exposure is highly diluted inside a diversified holding company [9]. The largest, most direct pure-plays — Welspun Living, Trident, Indo Count — trade in India and require international-brokerage access [6][7][8]. There is no dedicated U.S. home-textiles ETF; broad, indirect exposure comes via home-furnishings retailers and off-price chains that sell the category. Given thin margins and structural import pressure, these are special-situation / deep-value names, not core growth holdings.

Private-market routes. Most of the real activity is private: owning or rolling up custom-drapery and workroom businesses, hospitality/healthcare linen suppliers (service- and contract-driven, more defensible), or backing premium DTC bedding brands. Diligence should separate actual U.S. manufacturing gross profit from imported finished-goods distribution; map revenue by retailer, license and product program; test SKU-level inventory aging; identify the true origin of yarn, fabric and finishing; quantify tariff and freight sensitivity; and assess whether plant utilization survives the loss of the largest program. Asset-backed lending can also provide exposure because inventory and receivables are significant. These are operating businesses with modest margins, not yield or real-asset plays.

Outlook (forward-looking judgment). Domestic manufacturing is likely to remain structurally challenged — import competition and retailer power are not going away, and reshoring finished-textile production is capital-intensive and slow. The near-term swing factors to watch: the 2025–26 tariff and de-minimis regime (which raises landed import costs and could modestly favor domestic and nearshore supply) [33][35]; cotton prices (soft, easing input costs but signaling weak demand) [24]; housing turnover and consumer spending; automation investments that may improve domestic competitiveness [27]; and UFLPA sourcing compliance. The healthier pockets — where an investor is most likely to make money — are institutional/domestic-required linens and premium branded/DTC product, not commodity mass-retail goods. Expect continued foreign ownership of U.S. brands and gradual consolidation among the domestic survivors.

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Sources

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