Company History

Pollack is a boutique design company that specializes in unique and innovative designs by using a large, varied toolbox of artistry, fiber contents, yarns and weaving techniques.

The company got its start 30 years ago, when founders Mark Pollack, Rick Sullivan and Susan Sullivan launched a memorable collection of 22 textile designs targeted to the high-end interiors market. Since then, the line has flourished and expanded into the contract, residential and hospitality markets, as a more decorative aesthetic was combined with the company’s solid technical foundation. The wide-ranging collection is celebrated for fabrics that easily cross the lines of these individual segments–fabrics marked by sophisticated design, intricate construction, nuanced color palettes and timeless style. All constructed in partnership with specialized mills from around the world, carefully selected based on their expertise and capabilities.

Pollack merged operations with Weitzner Limited, a highly regarded wallcovering company known for its innovative designs, in 2011. With a worldwide following, Pollack remains a privately held company and employs approximately 70 people in its New York City headquarters and showroom and its Jersey City, NJ, warehouse.

Today, Pollack continues to thrive under the next generation of executives—all long-term veterans of the company—including Rachel Doriss, VP and Design Director, who took the helm of the design studio in 2011, and Susan Whalen, who was appointed President in 2017 and CEO in 2022.

The Design Studio

Rachel Doriss—who joined the company as a designer under founder Mark Pollack in 2000—oversees the in-house design team and guides the creative vision for each textile collection.

The studio’s designers are, first and foremost, weavers. Each has a degree in textile design, having learned the architecture of cloth and how to build a fabric from the ground up. They are makers, and they are artists–they believe in the value of drawing with a pencil rather than a computer mouse. Besides the control it gives over the quality of the line, putting pencil to paper expresses a uniquely personal hand, and the majority of Pollack’s patterns begin as hand-drawn sketches. Additional design factors then come into play: color, texture, luster, fiber content, hand and scale. In the Pollack Studio, these individual elements are balanced and perfected, becoming the building blocks of a fabric’s structure–and reminding us that we experience fabric on many levels and with most of our senses.