MARCH 2000

Week 1

Members of the Textile Distributors Association, during a meeting in mid February of representatives from the "converters" (print and dye companies), expressed real concern about the rising cost of petroleum affecting the cost of polyester and other synthetic fibers. They see the power of the retailers and the large apparel manufacturers making it almost impossible for them to raise their prices. This combined with the trend toward more and more US apparel manufactures taking their work out of the country, they see a shift away from catering to the apparel market.

They also noted that, while knits have been a popular choice for them to produce because the development time of the fabric is much faster, the is a noticeable shift toward producing more woven goods with the ratio now about 50%-50%.

Additionally they made notice that there is more knit conversion work being done in California than any where else in the country. That factor, combined with the heavy concentration of far east importers, means to us costumers that Los Angeles is one of the best resource areas for manufactures leftovers. We need to keep in mind that the majority of the fabrics will be of the quality level that one would find in the mass market with an emphasis on sports ware, not the higher end.

Week 2

There is a glut of denim and kaki in the market place. Cone Mills Corp., one of the primary denim producers posted a loss of $4.9 million in the 4th quarter ending January 2. They have aggressively curtailed denim production to 75% of capacity.

At the Pitti Filati Textile Trade Show in Florence, Italy, yarns for the spring and summer 2001 featured nature colors and a lot of bulky texture. Colors were divided into violet blues and olive greens, rich brown tones, fig and burnt orange, gold, dark reds and greens. The American buyers seemed to be resisting the more bulky fabrics. The event had 12% more buyers, while the Italian national textile association Federtessile reported that overall yarn production in Italy had fallen 5.9% and exports were down 7.8%.

Our editorial observations are that the Italian fabric styles usually take 3 or 4 years to filter down to the American mass market because they are primarily aimed at high fashion. If you want to see where things are going, watch the Italian textile market.