Phone: (310) 328-5999


555 Van Ness Avenue Torrance, CA 90501

About Texlon

Texlon Corporation began operations in 1955 in Torrance, California. The company was founded by Kenneth Watts, a USC chemical engineer and well known sailmaker. Watts had started a sailmaking business in the early 1940's and after the war was involved in the first testing and evaluation of Dupont synthetic fibers for use in sailcloth. Dissatisfied with the quality of commercially available sailcloth, Watts eventually decided to start a company to produce his own fabric. Texlon Corporation began as a sailcloth finishing operation. The heart of the processing plant was a huge coating/heat setting machine which Watts himself had designed and built. In 1965 Watts added a weaving facility to Texlon and began weaving Dacron sailcloth and nylon. Over the next two decades the company built an excellent reputation for quality and service and gradually expanded the business by producing numerous other industrial fabrics.

In 1987, the entire operation was moved to its present Torrance, CA location. Texlon became a part of Mobex International in 1992. In 1994, the company ended the weaving operation in order to further expand and specialize in industrial fabric finishing. A new state-of-the-art coating line and heat setting oven was added in 1996 giving Texlon a much greater control, capacity, and flexibility in the types of finishes it can offer. Upgrades in dyeing and key finishing equipment in 2001 expanded overall capacity and quality control. Texlon also has formed supply relationships with several other quality oriented manufacturers to produce fabrics to complement our product line. Texlon Corporation is committed to developing and producing high quality industrial fabrics and providing our customers with the service they have come to expect.


Santana Ship

Texlon wove, finished, cut & sewed the sails for Humphrey Bogart’s Santana. Bogart once commented, “An actor needs something to stabilize his personality, something to nail down what he really is, not what he is currently pretending to be.” He sailed Santana between 35 and 45 weekends a year. Most of those weekends were stag as Bogie felt that “the trouble with dames on board is you can’t pee over the side.”