Duralee Fabrics moves 64 jobs from Bay Shore to North Carolina

Duralee Fabrics Ltd., a former Manhattan garment district company that relocated to Long Island in the early 1960s, is moving 64 jobs to North Carolina, according to an executive and a state regulatory filing.

After the move, 60 employees will remain at the headquarters operation of the Bay Shore-based company, which distributes fabrics to high-end interior designers worldwide, said Lee Silberman, a Duralee executive vice president and co-owner. The company also has five employees at a Syosset showroom, one of 13 around the country.

The company is relocating 50 warehousing and fabric-sampling jobs and 14 administrative positions to Morganton, North Carolina, where Duralee has about 100 employees in a warehousing and furniture-manufacturing operation. The fabric-sampling operation sends out samples to interior designers.

All those Long Island employees have been offered jobs in North Carolina, and about eight have accepted so far, Silberman said. Those who don't relocate will be laid off.

"It's a sad state of affairs, but the difference in costs operationally, we can't ignore," Silberman said.

He said the remaining employees work in the company's executive offices, information technology, marketing, purchasing and credit and collection.

The company is also selling its 75,000-square-foot building in Bay Shore and is looking for a new, considerably smaller Long Island location of 10,000 square feet to 12,000 square feet, Silberman said.

Duralee was founded in 1952 in the Garment District, he said. It moved to Hicksville in the 1960s, and then moved east to Bay Shore in 1970.