Silsden-based Riverside Fabrics has appointed three senior sales and marketing managers to help drive forward its ambitious expansion plans.

Riverside, already one of the UK's largest manufacturers of fabrics for the commercial and residential interiors market, is expanding profitably in a highly competitive marketplace largely decimated in recent years by foreign imports.

Formerly part of Walker Greenbank Plc, Riverside Fabrics is now independently owned by Nigel Roberts, managing director, and creative director Jeremy Shaw.

They are determined to revive the company's fortunes and rapidly grow the £10million turnover business, which already employs over 100 people at its large, modern Keighley Road site.

Klaire French, Alison Holt and Dawn Sackett have been recruited to help develop the company's wide range of fabrics and to build its diverse customer base.

With a history of product development in a variety of fields, local girl Klaire French, 34 has been employed as business manager to generate new business, and manage key 'High Street' accounts.

With a core brief to market the Weavestyle brand, she is also to undertake the development of an exciting new range of lifestyle products and to promote

Riverside world-wide as the company seeks to build on its existing product offer and overseas business.

With almost 10 years experience of the UK upholstery market, including the last three as a company director, Dawn Sackett, 35, has been employed as business development director to increase the market penetration of Riverside's Weavestyle brand by broadening the appeal of the product.

Her brief is to produce a commercial range of designs at competitive prices that can be delivered in as little as 15 days.

With a passion for interior design and fabrics, Alison Holt is Riverside's new sales manager. The 35 year old will spearhead the launch of an exciting new fabrics collection called Girraf, initially across the UK and Ireland, and then into Europe, North America and the Far East.

Riverside is so confident of the brand's potential that it is unveiling the fabric collection on an international stage, at a major industry exhibition in Brussels in September. Armed with a degree in Business Studies and French, Alison will promote her new brand to interior designers and specialist retail outlets, and will also be seeking to recruit a network of sales agents.

MD Nigel Roberts said the three new appointments were clear evidence of Riverside's confidence in its new products and its determination to expand.

"In a very short time, we have turned Riverside Fabrics into a force to be reckoned with," he said. "Now that Klaire, Alison and Dawn have taken up their posts we are set to really drive the business forward.

"We are determined to show the world that with the right strategies, British manufacturers really can compete at a global level and that the textiles industry in this part of Yorkshire at least is very much alive and kicking."