Interviews

Is digital textile printing defining the industry today? Be it 'yes' or 'no', could you explain your assessment? Why is it so? Kamal Kulshreshth: No, the textiles industry is too huge to be defined by digital printing. Printing is only one way of adding value to fabric. Besides printing, fabrics are dyed, jacquard patterned, dobby patterned or imparted special finishes to add value. Even within the printed variety, less than 5 per cent of the total printed fabric production is digital, but...

What, according to you, has been the growth story of the FESPA Global Print Expo since it was organised for the first time? On that count, could you also share some numbers in terms of participants, visitors, etc? Roz Guarnori: FESPA has certainly come a long way since the launch of its first exhibition in Paris in 1963. Originally formed as an exhibition for European screen printers, by 1973 the event started to grow its audience outside Europe, welcoming visitors from further afield including...

How do you look at your brand's growth since your launch? Has it been according to (i) your expectations, and (ii) your own plans? Roshan Baid: To be honest, the growth of Alcis Sports has surpassed all expectations. I am very happy with the way Alcis Sports has been received by the audiences. We are currently selling over 30,000 items every month through various channels of sales. In the first year of our inception, we had revenue of about ₹6 crore and by the end of the financial year 2017–18...

Cotton Council International (CCI), the export promotion arm of the National Cotton Council of America (NCC), is a non-profit trade association that promotes US cotton fibre and manufactured cotton products around the globe with the Cotton USA trademark. CCI has 60 years of experience promoting US cotton fibre and products to trade and consumers, and works with spinning mills, fabric and garment manufacturers, brands, retailers, textile associations, governments and the USDA to facilitate the...

How concerned are you about copyright over your creations and the problem of piracy? Shilpa Agarwalla: We are very much concerned about the issue of copyright and IPR at large. While as a business, we own overall trademark as well copyright for our creations, I am appalled at the blatant imitations by many players in the fashion industry. I would not like to quote any specific instance, but if you look up the web for our designs as well as those of any leading designers, you will find copycats...

On current challenges Every industry needs three key components that give it the impetus of evolving into a significant and organised contributor to the economy, namely (i) education / R&D / skill training, (ii) association, (iii) government regulation / empowerment. The Indian fashion industry (albeit the status is more of a sub-sector of textiles) is relatively young from an organised perspective considering that its pioneering educational institutions and associations are less than three...

On current challenges This (violations of intellectual property rights) is one of the biggest problems because piracy or even copying of designs on a mass production scale hurts the business a lot. It is a stealing of ideas, which leaves one with a very bad taste. It is a threat to the brand name, and at the same time it also becomes a threat from buyers who might have bought a handcrafted, beautifully-created piece. But a similar kind of piece might be available with a brand in a printed...

The 18th Shanghai International Textile Machinery Exhibition this year will focus on the world’s latest innovative textile technologies, high-growth application sectors and cross-border technologies, thereby assisting industry to overcome challenges and trigger off new opportunities on the way to Industry 4.0. The four-day bi-annual signature event of the textiles industry of China, ShanghaiTex 2017 will be held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre, in the city of Sanghai from November...

It's been about a year and a half since the World Apparel & Footwear Life Cycle Assessment Database (WALDB) was launched. How do you personally see the progress so far? Rainer Zah: Since we launched WALDB the interest in environmental footprinting in the apparel industry is strongly growing. Some important players joined the initiative this year like SAC (Sustainable Apparel Coalition) and LVMH. This allows us to develop even more data for the members. What has been the response of industry so...

F2F: Please tell us about the backdrop to this new product. Robert van de Kerkhof: We launched the new sustainability report in April. So the story was about how important sustainability is about Lenzing; how it is integrated into the Lenzing corporation. What are the four pillars of our sustainability strategy. And that resulted in what we call 'innovating for balance'. That's the background about what we are trying to do by driving new innovations into the market. We are trying much more to...