Andrychów's weaving tradition dates back to the end of the 16th century, and regular mentions appear in the sources since 1673. In the 18th century, the estate owners (the Szwarcenberg-Czerny family), seeing the economic potential of Andrychów's weavers, carried out a number of actions to create a textile centre in this area: they brought specialists from Śląsk, Saxony, and Belgium, introduced leasing as a form of land use to reduce the number of fugitive peasants, and acquired the fair-holding privilege. This contributed to the change in the organisation of production: instead of growing flax, the peasants bought the ready material on the fairs and focused on the weaving. At the end of the 18th century, around 600 workshops operated in the Andrychów area. They produced 20 thousand pieces of fabric measuring 60 ells (59.6 cm) each. These fabrics were then sold in many centres in Kraków, Warsaw, Liviv, Jarosław, and Lublin, and abroad in Moscow, Istanbul, Smyrna, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Lübeck, Marseille, and Barcelona. The sale of fabric was the job of textile merchants ('drelicharze'), who developed their own bookkeeping system despite being illiterate.