Unifi

Unifi, Inc. is the Greensboro, North Carolina textile company founded in 1971, a global manufacturer of synthetic and recycled performance fibres best known for REPREVE, its brand of recycled performance fibre made from post-consumer plastic bottles and textile waste. Unifi trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol UFI. One of the world's largest producers and processors of textured polyester and nylon yarn, it supplies yarn manufacturers, knitters and weavers producing fabric for apparel, hosiery, home furnishings, automotive upholstery and industrial markets, with manufacturing in the United States and operations and partnerships across the Americas and Asia.

Company Profile

The February 2019 summary in the record describes the modern company: a global textile solutions provider and one of the world's leading innovators in manufacturing synthetic and recycled performance fibres, its proprietary technologies offering performance, comfort and style advantages to brand customers. The October 2013 summary records the yarn business underneath — polyester and nylon filament sold to the mills and knitters that turn fibre into fabric.

The September 2007 summary fixes the founding frame: founded in 1971, Unifi had grown well beyond its North Carolina roots into one of the world's largest producers of textured polyester and nylon yarn for apparel, home furnishings, automotive fabrics, upholstery and legwear. The REPREVE recycled-fibre strategy visible in the 2019 summary is the second act built on that commodity base — the same yarns, differentiated by recycled content and brand partnerships.

The range behind the name is textured polyester and nylon yarns and REPREVE recycled performance fibre. Its customers are yarn manufacturers, knitters and weavers serving apparel, home furnishing, automotive and industrial markets. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Unifi in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing Unifi with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Operating — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

For anyone researching the fashion industry's public-company era, Unifi is a useful case: a North Carolina yarn maker that rebuilt a commodity business around recycled fibre. The summaries in this section were compiled while the story was still unfolding, which is exactly what makes them worth keeping — they preserve what the company said about itself at the time, before the outcome was known.