Amarnath Grover started off with a few looms making Woollen shawls in the 1930s in Amritsar Punjab. The family moved to Mumbai in the 1950s where his sons Brijmohan & Kapilmuni joined him in growing the business & by the 1970s their ‘Modella’ brand was amongst the best known In India for blankets, worsted suiting fabrics & Merino wool tops with several plants in Mumbai, Amritsar, Chandigarh & Vadodara.
But alas political trade unions brought the entire textile hub of Mumbai to a grinding halt by mid 1980s including the Modella group’s flagship worsted suiting mill in 1986 – and the domino effect of this eventually caused the rest of the business to fold by mid-90s.
In search of new opportunities Kapalmuni visited several textile businesses in UK & USA in 1992 – but the one that impressed him the most was Barnet specially after taking a tour of the Spartanburg warehouses with Bill McCrary.
Kapalmuni died a year later in 1993. His son Uday (Bobbie) Grover, who joined the family business in 1985 and had started his career with 6 month stint at a textile Mill in Prato Italy, was curious & eager to know more about this fascinating organization ‘Barnet’ who his father had praised so much. Seeing an opportunity in importing polyester tow waste he contacted Robbie Vannoy at BUSA and together they quickly developed this into a regular business flow with bobbie Importing the polyester tows for his own needs as well as acting as agent for selling to other customers in India.
It was not until March 1997 when Robbie Vannoy visited India for the first time, and which was very soon after Bobbie had finally washed his hands off by winding down the last of his family’s Manufacturing plants in Baroda, that their meeting in Mumbai kicked off a formal business relationship with Bobbie becoming official agent for both Barnet USA & Europe later the same year. The agency was successful in marketing Barnet’s core line of yarn products including polyester & Nylon POY FDY etc N66 flocking tows. BEUR purchased staple fibre products from Reliance and Futura. This soon turned into an exclusive agency arrangement while many products like Acrylic from Eastern Europe & N66 HT yarns were added. With the growing business flows and a large future potential in sight, it became clear to both by 2001 to move to the next logical step by Barnet purchasing the majority share in Bobbie’s business. This gave birth to Barnet India Pvt Ltd in August 2002 – and the rest ‘as they say’ is history!
