Testing
About us
Fashion Foundation
With a fine art background, our founders Keith and Stephanie Rawkins began designing textiles for the fashion boutiques of swinging London in 1967, from a small basement flat in Fulham! A few specially designed commissions for private residences in the early 70’s gradually changed the focus to interiors and by the 80’s we were developing ranges of exclusive furnishing fabrics.
Origins
Commissioned to design and produce fine interior fabrics for motor yachts in the 90’s, we entered into a lucrative relationship with the marine industry at the highest levels! This involvement in superyacht projects revealed that the majority of fabrics available to use on the outdoor deck furniture were dull, drab and coarse. EXTEX was conceived in 2002 by Keith Rawkins (Marina Mill co-founder) as an exciting alternative, blending easy-care practicality with sophisticated style and softness.
Family Focus
Our family business has been producing fabrics for high end interiors for over 30 years, and our EXTEX luxury outdoor fabrics for over 10 years. Marina Mill is now run by Guy and Tandine, Keith & Steph’s son and daughter, producing printed and woven furnishing fabrics for a very discerning clientele.
EXTEX Team
We are very lucky to have a dedicated team of devotees.....Creative, passionate and conscientious throughout all stages of design, production, quality control and despatch.
Brand
We developed the EXTEX range of luxury outdoor fabrics to blend sophisticated style and softness with easy-care practicality, combining innovative design with contemporary colours and textures. Incorporating specially spun chenille yarns, 'Mull' was the first EXTEX fabric range developed by Marina Mill, its solid colours forming the basis of the extensive EXTEX colour palette. The subsequent ranges of plains, stripes, textures and patterns have all been designed to coordinate and complement each other.
Hand-printing
We are passionate about the unique qualities of hand-printing and as such, all our printed ranges are produced by artisans, in our mill in Kent, using the traditional silk screen method. We use only water-based dyes and harmless pigments for printing, to protect our local environment.
R&D
All EXTEX fabrics are designed by our in-house team. We select all the yarns, design the weave constructions, choose colours, draw the patterns, sample print and hand-print for production here at Marina Mill, all the while remaining dedicated to originality and innovation in design and technique.
EXTEX HQ - Marina Mill
EXTEX HQ resides in an old Victorian mill on the banks of the River Medway in Kent, South-East England. A pretty rural location, only 30 miles out of London. This is where we create all things EXTEX, as well as stock over 10,000 metres of it.
Image
We tightly control the EXTEX brand identity, creating our own concepts and running our photo shoots ensuring a relaxed, contemporary vibe.
Inspiration for our EXTEX collections comes from many sources: nature, oceans, beaches, English woodlands, tropical spas, far eastern cultures, stars and astronomy, with a little influence from current fashion trends obviously.
Made in Britain
EXTEX is proud to be supporting the Made in Britain campaign. All of our printed fabrics are done in-house. Our PR, brochure printing, sampling, design and warehousing are all done in the UK and 90% of EXTEX fabrics are woven here too.
Performance
The outside world is a harsh environment, so fabrics designed for the outdoors need to be exceptionally high performance. All our EXTEX fabrics are therefore light fast, stain- resistant, water repellent, saline and chlorine durable, pre shrunk, machine washable and dry cleanable.
Testing
We put all our EXTEX fabrics through rigorous testing procedures during the development process to ensure our customers’ absolute faith in the product. No fabric is launched without the relevant British standard specification.
Quality Control
We are sticklers for meticulous attention to detail at all stages of the production process. Every metre of fabric is subjected to scrupulous inspection before it is despatched.
Fabric Care
EXTEX fabrics are reassuringly easy-care. They are protected by a durable stain resist finish, which repels water, helps release stains and means the fabrics dry quicker. All are machine washable too.
Customer Service
We pride ourselves on excellent client communications and a great service, which has rewarded us with many loyal repeat customers.
Global
Thousands of metres of EXTEX fabrics are stocked at EXTEX HQ in the UK and are available directly from us, as well as from a rapidly expanding selection of designer showrooms around the world.