If you’ve ever seen the movies Mission: Impossible III, The Lovely Bones or Hancock, you’ve seen Stephanie Serio’s handiwork.
Cubicle Curtain Factory President & CEO Stephanie Serio (right) poses with her daughter, Liz Serio, VP Marketing & e-Commerce (left), surrounded by the fabrics they use to make their curtains. This woman-owned business creates curtains for hospitals and offices, among others. Their curtains have been used in movies and TV shows like Law & Order. Photo by J. Gwendolynne Berry/The Palm Beach Post
The same is probably true if you’re a devotee of TV shows Law & Order or The Sopranos.
Serio is not an actress. Nor is she a makeup artist or clothes designer.
She’s the president and chief executive of Cubicle Curtain Factory Inc., a West Palm Beach-based company that creates curtains for hospitals and offices, among others.
Her company of more than 30 employees didn’t mean to be part of the set-designing business; but their work and quick turnaround time have put them on Hollywood’s contact list.
According to a 2007 Palm Beach Post interview with the woman-owned business, Cubicle Curtain Factory makes about 100 to 200 curtains a day and had $3.2 million in sales for 2007.
In 2009, it was making about 1,000 curtains a week. The company refused to give updated numbers on sales, saying it was proprietary information, but did say 2009 was its biggest sales year of all its 16 years in business.
Serio said it’s been exciting seeing her company’s products on the big screen.
“When we watched Mission: Impossible III, I started yelling ‘Tom Cruise touched our curtains!'” Serio said with a laugh. She said the company was originally discovered through their website, but that word has spread about them among set designers.
“In the movies, there are a lot of things that they have to order,” Serio said. “Cubicle curtains are often forgotten until the last minute.”
A patterned hospital curtain made at Cubicle Curtain Factory in West Palm Beach. Cubicle curtain factory makes hospital curtains which are manufactured with inherently fire retardant (IFR) fabric that lasts through the life of the curtain. The top of the curtain is a durable nylon mesh with a snag free header. Photo by Damon Higgins/The Palm Beach Post
That’s something that Cubicle Curtain Factory is good at handling; when a set designer from The Lovely Bones (with Mark Wahlberg) asked for two curtains and four feet of track ASAP, the company received the order and shipped it the same day.
But the majority of the company’s work doesn’t include anything quite as glamorous. It makes and installs curtains for hospitals and doctor’s offices, as well as numerous other places.
The West Palm Beach VA Medical Center was among the first local facilities to use Cubicle Curtain Factory’s new Simply 66 Snap curtain system in 2008.
Knowing how hard it is to get heavy drapery up and down to clean it, Cubicle Curtain Factory created a simple, standardized curtain that can be replaced in sections. That means that only one part of the curtain must be taken down if it gets soiled, and it’s easier to put back up later.
“They look wonderful and are the latest in high-tech,” said Gilda Gomez, interior designer for the facility. “The fabric itself if antimicrobial, so we don’t have to replace it nearly as often. … We were very impressed with the simplicity of the system.”
