VALDOSTA— Responding to customer needs is always a winning card.

Fred Wilkinson, president of Wilkinson’s, has been successful in the textile business for 43 years thanks to being loyal to his customers and being flexible with their requests.

Wilkinson’s bought the Decorative Fabric Outlet in Lake Park on July 1, which let the company expand and saved the store from going out of business.

“The gentleman who owned the store in Lake Park was going out of business, and we saw that as a logical extension for us to do more business locally, and share some of the inventory,” Wilkinson said. “It was an opportunity to do decorative home style work for people in 50 to 70 miles radius from the store.”

The store sells fabric by the yard, but it also has pre-made bedding products such as pillows and comforters.

Customers can now look at different fabrics and choose what they want, and Wilkinson’s will make the desired product at the factory in Valdosta. In addition, they can also choose models and get ideas from two Web sites Wilkinson’s operate with, and then purchase over the phone. This way the company perfectly matches the needs of the client, while in the past they were creating the products for customers to choose from.

“During the early ‘90s, much of the manufacturing in textile began to go offshore, so we started transitioning to a more upscale product, and basically doing what people wanted us to do— creating a product driven by the customer rather than us driving the customer,” Wilkinson said.

“Our product line has evolved where now we manufacture upscale, home textile bed spreads, all types of window covering, shower curtains, table runners, types of pillows. To stay here, we started moving to a little higher price, responding to the requests of the increasingly informed customers.”

At the factory on Industrial Boulevard, the company also sells pre-made items at factory prices, and every first Saturday of the month they organize a huge sale between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m.

“It’s quite a hectic thing because you see women coming in with trash bags and boxes and carry that stuff out of here, which is good looking stuff at a very low price,” he said.

In 1958 Wilkinson started working for a major gourmet manufacturer in Georgia after he graduated college.

“It was very exciting to me because at that time, in the mid ‘60s, there was major manufacturing in this country, and to be involved in the actual creating and developing of something excited me like crazy, so I wanted to be in the business,” Wilkinson said.

Later, he became a manufacturers representative for another business and created a lot of connections with retailers like Walmart and Family Dollar. He then decided to give up that job and start his own company.

In January of 1980, he started the Wilkinson’s company, and according to him, that was the worst time to start since the interest rate was over 20 percent and the inflation rate was 10 percent.

“It was a terrible time to start,” he noted.

The company’s factory has moved to three different locations since the ‘80s: From the tobacco warehouse on River Street, then to the cotton mill building in Remerton, until three years ago when they finally moved to the current location on Industrial Boulevard. In the middle to late ‘80s, the company employed about 400 people and over time, that number was slowly decreasing to reach 60 employees.

Apparently, however, the bad timing didn’t let him down. Instead, he learned how to handle harsh economic times and was prepared for the current recession.

“This is the second or third recession we’ve experienced,” he said. “This one to me feels like the one in 1980, and the way we manage that, is the way we managed it in the past—we just greatly reduce our cost, and we’ve been very conservative operators over the years, and did not spend much money. The major contribution to us staying here in this turndown has been careful, conservative management.”

He added that the company has been maintaining good relationships with its customers and vendors throughout the years and as a result, they could afford to buy the Fabric Outlet in Lake Park when at the same time businesses all over the country are shutting down.

“We are very positive about the future, we think that there are new opportunities, and each time we go through a period like this, the competitive landscape changes, and we are trying not to get things fixed, we are constantly changing and looking for new ways to do something,” Wilkinson explained.

For more information, call the factory at (229) 242-4072, or visit Wilkinson’s Web sites at www.WilkinsonTextiles.com or DecorativeFabricsDirect.com.