About Us

• The Cohen family has been in some form of the textile industry for four generations, starting in the early 1900’s when the elder Mr. Cohen came from Russia and peddled fabrics to companies out of New York. He earned enough money to open a knitting mill on Walker Street on the lower east side of New York. As his son, Herbert Cohen grew up in the family business, he had other ideas. He had the vision of the textile mills moving to the southeast United States and landed a job with Whitaker and Whitaker. They moved him to Tennessee where he had the hard task of closing down one of their textile plants. After doing so, he was so distraught, he decided to open his own business and never again close down a textile mill. Herb Cohen moved to Anderson, South Carolina and started working with a few local textile mills picking up their textile remnants, overruns and the cutting plants waste. He had several employees by this time. They started segregating the waste by color and fiber and sold them to a local garnetter. Herb had a few old friends in New York who would buy the materials and sell them to retail stores in the northeast and Caribbean. Phoenix of Anderson was formed after Herb Cohen (Mr. C) had a fire in his Anderson, South Carolina warehouse. “Phoenix” a symbol from the biblical time, representing a bird that arose from the ashes was an appropriate name as Eric, one of Mr. Cohens four sons came into the business. They worked together rebuilding the fabric business and renamed Textile Enterprises of Anderson (TEA) to Phoenix of Anderson. A year later, Herb and Eric approached another son, Greg, about working in the family business. The three Cohens worked together to build up their small fabric wholesale business. For the next five years business was tough as the textile industry was moving off-shore.