Raleigh / North Carolina / United States
Midas Fabric & Blinds For almost 40 years, locally owned Midas Fabrics & Blinds has offered designer upholstery and drapery fabrics, reupholstering, custom-tailored draperies, bed coverings, pillows, decorating advice and in-home consultations. Midas Fabrics & Blinds grew from humble beginnings. In 1971, a favor turned Midas Fabrics, originally a wholesale business, into a retail store. It happened when Joan, a friend of the owners, stopped in for a lunch date. She saw a bolt of green velvet and asked if she could buy 20 yards of it to recover her sofa. "Thirty years ago, the public didnt have a choice when it came to fabric; " said Midas Fabrics founder and CEO, Laura Milgrim. "Furniture was upholstered in harvest gold and avocado green, and whatever fabric was on the piece of furniture you bought was what you were stuck with. Now, fabric is a fashion industry, but back then you could only get a unique product or look if you hired a decorator." Success came steadily with emphasis on having a wide selection, discount prices, plus friendly service. A natural extension to selling fabric was the addition of custom services, including: window treatment fabrication, upholstery, and free decorating help. Or, as General Manager George Cronson explains, "It only made sense to give our customers a finished product instead of just the material. Who better to turn our fabrics into beautiful window and upholstery products than Midas?" "As word spread, we had customers driving in from all over North Carolina" said Milgrim. In response, Midas Fabrics opened a store in Raleigh in 1984, a store in Pineville opened in 1998. A fourth location at Lake Norman was added in 2001, which brings the current number of Midas Fabric stores to four. "Four stores means we have greater buying power than a lot of our competitors, " Cronson added. "We buy most of our fabrics directly from the mills that produce them. When we buy 60-yard bolts of fabric, there are substantial savings over those who buy by the yard. We pass the savings on to our customers."
