Like many other cut and sew operations there is the construction side of the business and then there is the fashion side. Arthur Nazginov is the master technician at Life Style Covers and his machines make light work of some of the most time consuming aspects of the futon cover business.

“This is my zipper machine,” says Nazginov. The machine, designed by Nazginov himself, folds over a small portion of two wider pieces of cloth, and draws them both through the machine’s foot and each half of a zipper is sewn on to each side. The machine can do in an hour what it would take an experienced sewer a day to do. “This machine saves us time and money,” says Nazginov. “It is fully automatic. Once you load the zipper and a thread, it will beep when the process is done or when a damaged zipper, cut thread or the end of the fabric is detected.” He adds, “It never needs a lunch break either.”

(Picture below: The Life Style Covers team photo: For the Nazginovs, and their team, business is part of life, and life is good.)
The couple’s pride and joy is another time and money saving device, a fabric cutting machine. Typically fabric is cut to size on a large table. Someone will lay out the fabric, folding it back over itself at the desired length. After each style of fabric to be cut is laid out it is measured again for accuracy and then cut with a large electric “knife”. The knife is like a circular saw without teeth. Well, at Life Style Covers they have a machine that cuts fabric at very precise lengths one piece at a time. No one has to lay out the fabric on a table, and no one has to cut the fabric with the knife. “Just program the terminal to the desired length and the number of sheets you want, and you are all done,” says Arthur.

“This machine can cut hundreds of pieces of fabric in an hour. One person can cut as much fabric in a day as it would take six people to cut with the other method, and this machine is so precise that you could never do it by hand. Besides, unlike cutting by hand - there no fabric waste either. I figured out by using this machine I save 4.5" of fabric per each cover cut, in laymen terms - that's every 35th futon cover is made out of fabric that would be wasted if was cut by hand ” he said.

We then move into the sewing room where twelve or so people are working. “Each of our sewers can make from sixty to one hundred futon covers per day, depending on the cover  or slipcover style,” says Lillian. “Smile, smile,” she says as we take some pictures of the production crew.

(Picture: (l to r) Arthur and Lillian Nazginov pose for the camera next to their sheet cutter.)
There are four cutting tables in the sewing room. “These tables are for cutting custom orders. Lately, we are making a lot of different size futon covers, anywhere from double split full to heart shaped futon casings,” she says.

Fifty percent of the company’s business is custom covers and the other fifty is off-the-shelf. “We can deliver almost any order in twenty-four to forty-eight hours. We have this ability because we maintain an inventory of about 5,000 finished futon covers and from 200 to 5,000 yards of each pattern that we offer in our reorder-able swatch program. Sixty-five percent of our business is from a reorder-able swatch program and thirty-five percent is factory selects, or non-reorderable fabrics. Managing finished inventory is a key to our success since currently we ship about 750 to 1,000 covers each day. All our futon covers are inspected for quality assurance and are shipped in these zippered, clear, plastic bags,” she said.

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