Quilting a thriving industry

If you took a quick poll of your friends and asked them what image pops in their heads when they hear the word "quilting," I suspect many would envision a gathering of women gathered in someone's home tying a quilt.

In my mind, I can still see the wooden frames standing in the front room of my childhood home in San Carlos, California, the two large pieces of fabric forming a sandwich around the insulating batting, as hands deftly drove strands of yarn through the material over and over in the process of tying the quilt together.

It's a simple, even rudimentary process of creating a quilt and one that is still used around the world today.

Nevertheless, "tying a quilt" in no way describes what has become a multi-billion dollar worldwide industry that is centered in the United States and is increasingly relying upon technology to grow the quilting phenomenon.

In fact, any established industry that can grow 50 percent in a five-year period and now generates more than $2.2 billion in annual revenue is an industry worth watching.

With a bachelor's degree in clothing and textiles, fashion design to her credit, my wife took a part-time job three years ago with Sandy-based Quilts Etc. where she works an average of five days a month.

She has also begun designing quilt patterns on our home computer, which has led her to teach the occasional class on quilt making in connection with her employer.

It was these endeavors that brought the two of us to Houston in late October to attend the 2003 International Quilt Market as one of her original quilts had won third place in an international competition.

Quilt Market is the business-to-business phase of a two-part trade show/conference, with Quilt Festival catering to the quilting public.

In combination, the two events attract more than 55,000 attendees from around the world anxious to see and learn about the latest in quilting ideas.

Eight Utah-based companies were exhibitors at Market and two are clearly technology companies.

The first is Ensign Systems out of Kaysville that sells its POS-IM software to quilt stores and other retailers around the country.

POS-IM is a point-of-sale/inventory management software package for both Macintosh and Intel-based personal computers and local area networks.

With POS-IM installed, quilt stores can produce invoices, purchase orders, sales receipts, enter and track inventory, create and generate reports and much more.