Company of the Year
American Textile Company
Lance Ruttenberg, President and CEO, accepting
American Textile Company was founded in 1925 by five brothers in the Ruttenberg family from Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. They began as a small manufacturer of protective furniture covers for local retailers. Today, the firm is a multi-brand manufacturer celebrating the company's centennial anniversary.
Your products help others sleep well at night. Other than using your own products, what tactics does the American Textile Company leadership use to help you sleep well at night given immense supply chain challenges?
American Textile Company has been developing its global supply chain for decades, and it will always be a work in progress because the challenges continue to change. We explored Central America over 30 years ago as CAFTA was signed. The El Salvador operation we set up then continues to be a strategic asset, even more so now as customers look to build their western hemisphere sourcing. At the same time, we have built relationships throughout Asia and other parts of the world because we never want to be reliant on a single supplier or country for materials or finished goods. Redundancy is key to ensuring surety of supply, which is the promise we make to our customers. While we have continued to work across the world, our largest investments by far have been in the United States. We have 4 state-of-the-art facilities in Pittsburgh PA, Tifton GA, Dallas TX, and Salt Lake City UT. These allow us to manufacture and distribute freight efficiently anywhere in North America. This blend of global and domestic capabilities helps everyone sleep a little better at night.
We know you never stand still – so how do you balance being an early adopter of new technologies without going too far out of the comfort zone?
Innovation has always been central to our strategy. In our experience, the key to making new technology successful is ensuring it provides a benefit that consumers value, then presenting those benefits in a clear and compelling way. We never forget that our consumer has a lot of things on her mind, and choosing the right bed pillow or mattress protector is usually one of many things she has to worry about on any given day. Our goal is to provide her with innovative products with visuals and language that jump off the shelf or online item page because she immediately understands how and why they are different and better than the other choices she may be considering.
From 1925 versus 2025 – what does the company have in common across the decades?
One thing that has been a constant from 1925 to 2025 is being owned and operated by the same family. Only about 12% companies make it to the third generation of family ownership. Among other things, this stability has allowed our key values such as teamwork, customer focus, and respect to thrive. If we work as a team to ensure we meet the evolving needs of our customers, its amazing how many other things take care of themselves.
Talent and investing in your team has been central to ATC’s tremendous growth. Can you share a few perspectives on how that has been so effective?
As we have grown, the talents and capabilities we need to thrive as a company continue to change. Fortunately, the investments we make in long-time employees prepares many of them for these changing roles. We have many employees who have been with ATC for 20, 30, or even 40+ years, and we make it a priority to celebrate the growth and loyalty of these longtime employees. At the same time, we embrace new opportunities and create new roles that bring people with different experiences as we scale the business. The growth in eCommerce is a great example of this. We’ve built that capability with a blend of new and existing team members, and it is now setting the pace for growth in our business.
Reflecting on the last several decades, is there one change you would highlight that impacted your business more than others?
The composition of our customer base has changed enormously over the last 100 years, and it continues to evolve. If you go back to the beginning, our customer base consisted of small regional retailers in an around Pittsburgh. Over the years that grew to include similar regional retailers in the Northeast, and eventually the South and West. As we all know, over the last 40 years these small regional players consolidated. For the bedding products we sell, the department stores that were once dominant were replaced by mass and specialty retailers, who themselves then consolidated. Today, a handful of large, increasingly global retailers dominate the stage, and the ability to build online retail is perhaps more important than the ability to sell in stores. For American Textile Company, this is all very exciting. We’ve never lost sight of our vision – Better Sleep, Better Life – so delivering products of value, no matter where or how people shop, will remain our north star as things inevitably evolve.
Get your tickets to support American Textile Company and the future of the industry! We look forward to an incredible celebration on April 29!