NAICS 3132Industry group · 4-digitinternational market1 market record

Fabric mills

This industry group comprises establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing textile fabrics. Establishments classified in this industry group may finish the fabrics that they manufacture. Establishments primarily engaged in manufacturing both fabrics and textile products, except knitted clothing, are included. — Statistics Canada, NAICS 2022A

Establishments · CanadaA: 92
Under 10 employeesA: 41%
Establishments · USA: 772
Employment · USA: 40,866
Payroll · USA: $2.2B

Size and shape

How many businesses there are and how small they are. Fragmentation is the first thing an entrant — or anyone selling software into this industry — needs to know, and it is one of the few things that is actually measured.

Canadian establishments by number of employeesA

1–42527%

5–91314%

10–191617%

20–491415%

50–991112%

100–1991011%

200–49933%

500+0—

Of 92 Canadian establishments with employees, 41% have fewer than ten — an industry where large establishments carry real weight.

Where they areA

Quebec4043%

Ontario4043%

Manitoba44%

British Columbia33%

Largest four provinces by establishment count. Establishments with employees only — sole operators with no payroll are not in this table, so in trades and personal services the true number of businesses is higher.

How many new establishments are still tradingA

Manufacturing, US · opened 2020

86.2%

1 year

70.8%

3 years

58.4%

5 years

45.3%

10 years

opened 2015

Measured, not forecast: the share of US establishments opening in one year that were still active later. It counts good operators and bad ones together, which is exactly why it is the honest answer to “what are the odds”. It is for the whole sector rather than this market, and the ten-year figure comes from an older cohort because no younger one has reached ten years.

How businesses here compete

The structural profile of subsector 313, which every industry beneath it inherits. This is analyst judgment from how the subsector is organised — not research into this industry, and not a measurement.

international competitionhigh capitalUNVERIFIEDinherited from 313 Textile mills

A subsector that largely moved offshore. What remains is technical and specialty textiles sold on performance specification rather than price.

Who sets the price: Import competition.
The software it runs on: Standard manufacturing ERP.

Market screens and studies

Market-entry records filed along this branch of the hierarchy. A record at or beneath this code is about this industry; one above it is about something wider that contains it.

Operating businessScreened

Technical Fabric MillStructure decides

binding constraint: capital intensity

The pre-screen filed this under structural exit. The Canadian numbers say otherwise, and the difference matters. Fabric mills are the largest and steadiest of the textile groups: $1,305.9M of revenue in 2024 against $1,093.1M of expenses, revenue between $1.19B and $1.35B every year since 2015, and a surplus over expenses of 9–16% of revenue in each of them [A]. Nonwovens alone are $410.4M. These are technical survivors — filtration, geotextile, protective and industrial fabric sold on specification. What has left is the commodity work, and Culp's filing is the local proof: it closed its Quebec mattress-fabric plant, sold the building for C$8.6M, moved part of the knitting to North Carolina and now buys the jacquard it used to weave in Canada from a supplier in Turkey — and reported a $18.4M operating loss on $213.2M of sales in the year of the closure, narrowing to a $7.2M loss on $203.5M the year after [A]. So the enterable question is the technical mill, and the cut is capital intensity. Thirteen of the 92 Canadian establishments have 100 or more employees; US mills average 53. A nonwoven or broad-woven line is sunk before the first metre is qualified, and qualification with a filtration or protective-fabric customer is measured in seasons. The margin the survivors earn is the return on plant and approvals already paid for. An entrant with ordinary resources cannot buy the line, and could not fill it while waiting to be specified.

NAICS 31324 vendors named11 sourced figuresOpen →

Software serving this industry

The vertical software markets filed along the same branch — who sells to these businesses and who they would have to displace — and then the generic categories every business buys whatever it does.

No vertical software market has been recorded along this branch. What the subsector typically runs on: Standard manufacturing ERP.

Catalogued categories — named, not analysed

Discrete manufacturing ERP SaaS 31-33

And what every business buys · 25 generic categories

Sold to every industry rather than this one, so they are filed against the software industry's own code. The same few vendors recur across most of them.

Companies in this industry · 3

Every company this research names that is filed here or beneath — the operators, and the vendors that sell to them — largest disclosed revenue first. The rank is within the company’s own six-digit industry.

Company	Filed under	Revenue	Rank
CulpNYSE:CULP	Fabric mills3132	$204M	1/3
Stedfast · Lincoln Fabrics · Monterey Textiles · Texonic · Tricots Liesse · VintexPrivate	Fabric mills3132	—	2/3
Texel Technical MaterialsPrivate	Fabric mills3132	—	3/3

Who works here

The occupations employed in Manufacturing, most concentrated in it first. The share is measured against the whole sector, not this industry — the published cross-tabulation stops there.

Concentrated in this sectorA

Aircraft assemblers and aircraft assembly inspectors One industry 91.3%

Supervisors, assembly and fabrication One industry 88.3%

Machine operators and related workers in pulp and paper production and wood processing and manufacturing One industry 86.1%

Managers in manufacturing and utilities One industry 84.4%

Machine operators and related workers in chemical, plastic and rubber processing One industry 82.7%

Mechanical, electrical and electronics assemblers and inspectors One industry 82.3%

Machine operators and related workers in food, beverage and associated products processing One industry 79.1%

Machine operators and related workers in mineral and metal products processing and manufacturing One industry 77.7%

Furniture, wood, plastic and other products assemblers, finishers and inspectors One industry 73.9%

Machine operators and related workers in textile, fabric, fur and leather products processing and manufacturing One industry 70.8%

These jobs are mostly done here. An operator in this industry is competing for them against others in the same industry, not against the whole economy.

And the jobs every business has

Other technical trades Across the economy 20%

Technical occupations in electronics and electrical engineering Across the economy 16.3%

Shoe repairers, shoemakers and upholsterers Across the economy 15.2%

Administrative and financial supervisors Across the economy 11.6%

Technical inspectors and regulatory officers Across the economy 10.7%

Administrative services managers Across the economy 9.6%

Legislative and senior managers Across the economy 9.2%

Building maintenance installers, servicers and repairers Across the economy 8.3%

Financial, insurance and related administrative support workers Across the economy 7.7%

Technical occupations in computer and information systems Across the economy 4.8%

Found across at least fourteen of the twenty sectors. In a small establishment several of these are usually one person, or an outside provider.

All 162 occupations →

Inside this industry

4 rows sit directly beneath 3132, and 8 in all once every level is counted. Each has a base report of its own.

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
31321	Broad-woven fabric mills	27	screened at 3132
31322	Narrow fabric mills and Schiffli machine embroidery	25	screened at 3132
31323	Nonwoven fabric mills	21	screened at 3132
31324	Knit fabric mills	19	screened at 3132

Alongside it, under 313 Textile mills

Code	Industry	Establishments · CA	What is known
3131	Fibre, yarn and thread mills	44	Specialty Yarn & Custom Fibre Mill
3133	Textile and fabric finishing and fabric coating	107	Fabric Coating & Commission Finishing