Something no other cloth manufacturer can buy

The textile industry is one of the most widespread industries in the world, and historically even one of the first to have established itself almost everywhere. However, mastering each billiard cloth manufacturing step in the right environment is challenging.

Like wine production, everyone can find the basic ingredients but there are only a very few vineyards who know how to produce very good wine: it requires the right place, with the right ingredients and the experience no one can buy.

It has been more than three centuries now that Iwan Simonis S.A is defining the standards of what a billiard cloth should be. And because we have access to what no other manufacturer has, we are more than ever the worldwide reference for billiard cloths.

The right place

From the 18th century to the early 20th century, Verviers, where Iwan Simonis was founded and where it is still based today, established itself as one of the world’s major wool centers. The ultra-soft water of the Vesdre is the founding element of the Verviers textile industry. With very low limestone content, it allowed wool to be washed, degreased and softened without breaking the fiber. The result: a finer, more regular yarn, ideal for tightly woven cloth.

From the 18th century onwards, an entire economy structured itself around this resource: fulling mills, spinning mills, dye works and weaving sheds. Without this unique water, there would be no lustrous wool and no precision fabric. It is this water which, indirectly, made it possible for Simonis cloth to emerge — stable, dense, perfectly smooth and capable of delivering a consistently true roll.

Benefiting from exceptional water, pioneering companies and a dense working-class, the city exported its cloth and textiles to every continent. Mills lined the Vesdre, working-class districts grew around the spinning plants and merchants crossed the Atlantic. Verviers became a powerful industrial city, equipped with banks, technical schools and international trading networks.

Inaugurated in 1878, the Gileppe dam brought Belgium’s first textile infrastructure and met a vital need: clean, stable water for the wool industry. It secures the flow of the Vesdre, limits floods and droughts and guarantees consistent washing conditions for the fiber.

This public infrastructure became the backbone of the Verviers textile sector. Without the Gileppe, there would have been neither the same regularity nor the same large-scale production capacity.

At its peak, the city rivalled Bradford (UK), Mönchengladbach (Germany) and Roubaix (France). It produced military cloth, civilian fabrics, luxury materials — and above all a know-how that would, over time, give birth to Simonis billiard cloth. Industry shaped the urban landscape: bridges, mills, workshops, workers’ houses, mansions and textile halls punctuated the city. Even after the gradual decline of the 1950s, this heritage remains visible in stone, memory and craft.

Verviers was not only a wool city: it was a world of its own — an ecosystem that gave rise to companies capable of surviving three centuries and achieving global leadership.

The right raw materials

The wool we used is of the upmost importance. We get it supply from the most renowned livestock farming. And even though we do so, there is a systematic thorough inspection of the wool beforehand, from the thread origins to their fineness as there is a diversity of threads depending on our different cloth characteristics. This has a major impact on the ball speed and control.

Our specifications regarding the wool are the strictest in the industry to provide the same consistency from one cloth to another. The finer the thread, the more precise and faster the cloth is. This is the case for our Simonis 330 Rapide carom cloth for instance used on the highest-level competitions. For our Simonis 860 American pool cloth, it is double woven and therefore slower.

And thanks to our ancestral expertise in wool manufacturing combined with high-tech processes, we master the key steps for the weaving, the dyeing, the shearing or the decasting for instance for an unmatched dimensional stabilization method for a perfect consistency and replicability rolls after rolls.

The right people

This is above all what makes the Simonis Cloth unique. Another cloth manufacturer managing to get exactly the same manufacturing equipment wouldn’t produce the same output. At our fully integrated factory in Verviers, we have craftspeople who have been working there from generations to generations. Our high-tech processes and pieces of machinery are important. But behind each manufacturing equipment, you have people who know exactly how they need to calibrate them, customize them and in which order everything has to be processed to reach this unmatched level of excellence and consistency.

Some of our craftspeople have been working in our factory way before some of the other cloth manufacturers even existed. This expertise, the constant human quality controls we proceed with at every key steps of the manufacturing process enable us to provide the exact same output, rolls after rolls, years after years. No other cloth manufacturers in the world complete that many human quality checks. The initial check at Iwan Simonis consists for instance of people working with tweezers and needles on backlit tables to fix any inconsistencies resulted from the beaming and weaving process.

What sets us apart is that what is acceptable elsewhere in terms of defects is not acceptable for us. We cannot afford to have defects in the cloth, whether it will be used during international competitions, in junior leagues or at someone’s home table. This is what makes Simonis Cloth the Reference for all professional and amateur players, local, national and international sports organisations. When your order a Simonis Cloth, you know what you are getting. There no bad surprises in terms of quality or performance.
All that we produce at our factory is led by passion and hard work to offer our clients the best playing experience. All the details in the manufacturing process make it an exceptional product, starting from a product where one might think they are all identical.

With a perfect consistency and replicability, our customers truly pay for what they will get, and nothing else.

With this manufacturing heritage, this attention to the smallest details, we, at Iwan Simonis, provide you the perfect cloth for the truest roll. This is why most the records have been achieved on a Simonis Cloth. This is why playing on a different cloth changes the whole experience.