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The French Textile Equipment Manufacturers' Association (UCMTF), a group of about 35 companies, has introduced a new modernised logo made of textile ribbons of blue, white, red colors of the French flag.
The new logo will be seen in the main international textile machinery fairs and in the textile magazines as France is the sixth textile machinery exporter with world leaders in such fields as long fibre spinning (wool, acrylic), yarn twisting and control (including technical yarns), space-dyeing, heat setting for carpet yarns, carpet systems, dyeing and finishing, felts and belts for finishing processes, nonwovens, air conditioning of textile plants and recycling processes of textile materials.
Zero-tariff trade has become the number one priority for the UK after Brexit. Without a tariff-free trade deal, everything can get more expensive and difficult. Imposing tariffs would require bonded warehousing, to minimise the duty paid on moving goods. Though the EU is ready to offer a highly ambitious trade deal that includes zero tariffs and quotas, it would also demand specific and effective guarantees to ensure a level playing field.
The EU is the UK’s largest export market. Three fourths of the UK’s exports go to the EU across the fashion and textile industry, so an additional cost on top of that would be catastrophic. It will also be important for the UK and Turkey to secure a separate trade deal. Turkey is a big fabric supplier, and has a customs union with the EU, so the UK will have to do a deal.
At the same time there would be no need for a free trade agreement to involve accepting EU rules on competition policy, subsidies, social protection, the environment, or anything similar, any more than the EU should be obliged to accept UK rules. The UK exited the bloc on January 31, 2020.
Parisian show Premiere Vision has adopted a new calendar. It will include a fall/winter event taking place in early July, rather than mid-September. In 2021, Première Vision Paris will take place from February 2 to 4, followed by an event from July 6 to 8. Blossom Première Vision, dedicated to premium brands and luxury labels’ pre-collections, was originally held in early July. It will now be transformed into a new event, set for the second week of September.
This new calendar has placed Première Vision’s main event only a week after Pitti Immagine Filati 87, the yarn and knitwear show that takes place in early July in Italy. At the moment, Munich Fabric Start is held in the beginning of September, before Première Vision. This will change with the new calendar. Première Vision will also be distancing itself from Chinese textile and clothing fairs, notably Intertextile and Chic, which advanced their dates from mid-October to late September in 2018.
There are three reasons behind the date change. First, products arrive in stores earlier now, with the common practice of pre-collections. Second, collections, along with their delivery, have increased in pace. Third, faced with these changes, collections now develop over longer periods of time, beginning the process earlier.
North Face is designing garments with their entire life cycle in mind. The focus is on extending the product’s lifespan and finding new purposes for it when it’s finally beyond use. Interacting with worn-out clothes helps designers see parts of garments that tend to break or tear first, so designers will now reinforce these parts. Among the pieces from the line is a kimono sweater made from an old puffer coat. It’s chic, with clean lines, giving new life to a garment that would have ended up in the trash.
Circularity is a movement devoted to keeping clothes out of landfills. When it comes to the fashion industry, this involves wearing garments longer, repairing them when they are damaged, then repurposing or recycling them when they have reached the end of their life. Many brands are shifting toward this model. Since 2000, the average number of times a consumer wears an item before throwing it away has dropped by 36 per cent. Many people use a garment only eight to ten times before throwing it. These habits are contributing to the destruction of the environment. Every year, 85 per cent of all textiles produced end up in landfills or the ocean. Since most clothes are made from plastic-based synthetic fibers, these garments might take hundreds of years to decompose.
The coronavirus outbreak in China is impacting Nike’s business forcing it to shut down half of stores in the country. The brand could fall short of its earnings consensus for its third fiscal quarter by as much as 15 cents per share due to store closures across China in response to the coronavirus outbreaks.
However, despite the difficult situation, Nike’s long-term opportunity to continue to serve consumers in Greater China with inspiration and innovation remains exceedingly strong. China has been one of the biggest growth markets for Nike, and the world's largest sportswear maker has relied heavily on the spending power of Chinese consumers to counter slowing sales growth in North America.
In December 2019 revenues of the retail sector dropped 0.9 per cent in Europe. In 2018, sales of the sector fell 2.2 per cent. This setback breaks the upward trend that the sector experienced in recent months. Last June, fashion trade in Europe grew 2.9 per cent and touched 3.1 per cent in September but by November it was 1.5 per cent. In fact, January, May, April, and December were the only months of 2019 when the fashion sector experienced poor sales, with a decrease of 0.3 per cent, 4.8 per cent, 2.4 per cent and 0.9 per cent respectively. In the whole of European Union, the textile, clothing and footwear trade registered a year-on-year decrease of 0.2 per cent in December.
The largest increases in 2019 were recorded in Romania, Hungary, and Ireland with a year-on-year growth of 8.5 per cent, 6.1 per cent, and 5.2 per cent respectively. In Spain, the rise in trade was 1.1 per cent while Germany, France, and the United Kingdom marked increases of 0.8 per cent, 2.5 per cent and 2.9 per cent in 2019.
American shoppers are helping boost European retail market. Fashion and beauty are among the main beneficiaries of tourist spending in the UK and Europe.
Milan Fashion Week will be held from February 18 to 24, 2020. Typically an event like this attracts a thousand visitors from China, buyers, journalists or designers. But now very few are expected, mainly Chinese visitors who were already in Europe at the time of the outbreak. So the idea is to have the Chinese virtually participate in the Milan Fashion Week. Eight young Chinese stylists will be given the chance to participate in the Fashion Hub Market. This will be achieved through pre-recorded video discussions and figures that will allow them to present their projects. As the Coronavirus epidemic intensifies, the National Chamber of Italian Fashion has declared its solidarity with China. The campaign is twofold, with a special event and multiple video conferences that will take place between both countries all week.
The fashion week has announced 56 runways. The 2020-21 season is dedicated to ready-to-wear for fall/winter. Moncler, Ports 1961 and Philipp Plein will be returning, accompanied by Gilberto Calzolari and Vìen, who will be showing for the first time. In addition, a Chinese brand, with a presence in Europe and the US, is expected to show. Meanwhile, Italian fashion has already been economically penalized by the impact of the Coronavirus. For the first semester of 2020, the sector’s revenue is expected to decline by 1.8 per cent, particularly from January to March.
Purified terephthalic acid (PTA) producers in India could see their margins falling by 20 per cent since anti-dumping duty has been abolished on the chemical. PTA is a raw material used in the production of polyester staple fiber and filaments. The removal of the anti-dumping duty is expected to help India enhance its global competitiveness, boost exports and also enable domestic producers to compete with cheaper imports. The anti-dumping duty, imposed in July 2016 and July 2019, has now been revoked on PTA imported from China, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Taiwan, Korea and Thailand. China is a very big player with huge upstream and downstream PTA capacities, which has added to the pressure on PTA margins.
Owing to its properties such as weathering resistance, strength and flexibility, PTA’s use is growing across various end-use industries such as food and beverages, electronics, apparel, home textiles, carpets, and industrial fiber.
With the anti-dumping duty abolished, the effective spread earned by a company will be lower. Domestic capacity for PTA would be closer to about six million tons. And with Reliance Industries enhancing capacity in a big way, it could be impacted significantly. Reliance Industries is the biggest PTA producer in the country, with a domestic capacity of 4.4 million tons per annum.
India’s cotton exports may witness a temporary slowdown as the spread of coronavirus is likely to curtail demand for the fiber. Exports of around 2,50,000 cotton bales from India to China, for which deals were signed in January, have been put on hold as concerns over the spread of coronavirus have intensified. These deals will be settled mutually if the situation is not brought under control soon. In January, Indian exporters signed deals to export 7, 00,000 to 8,00,000 bales of cotton, of which 4,00,000 or 500,000 bales or 60 per cent were meant for China, and the rest for Bangladesh and Vietnam. After the uncertainty in China, cotton exporters in India are anxious to sign up for new consignments with China.
Strong orders from other countries and lower domestic prices have made sales economically viable. Indian cotton is offered at prices lower than crop from west Africa and the US. So finding new buyers won’t be difficult. India’s overall exports might touch five million bales mainly due to strong orders from other importing destinations like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Indonesia.
Trading has resumed at financial markets in China, the second largest economy, after an extended holiday for the Lunar New Year.
After the spring festival, most spandex enterprises in the Chinese mainland have kept their run rate steady. Among the 23 spandex plants in the Chinese Mainland, 16 plants have partially shut down or reduced production, while a small amount of enterprises have decreased their operating rate after the festival.
Affected by the bullish support of the eased trade war and considerable orders from weaving plants in the fourth quarter, spandex inventory was continuously reduced. Before the spring festival, the inventory of spandex plants once fell back to below 40 days. Nevertheless, spandex industry inventory rapidly ticked up as downstream demand vanished during the spring festival as well as the extended holiday. Spandex industry inventory has increased to 48 days. It may take time for downstream weaving plants to recover. A small number of spandex downstream weaving plants are estimated to restart after the Lantern Festival.
The number of spandex units shutting down and reducing production is far lower than the number of downstream weaving plants. The market trading is in a vacuum phase. Industry inventory is expected to significantly rise. The spandex industry is estimated to be supported by the cost side after the festival. Spandex plants are mainly sell cargoes and curtailing their inventory which has sharply increased.
