WW Holding, which has become the largest luxury bag and luggage manufacturer, serving more than 300 brands worldwide, seeks to gain more notable brands in the midterm to solidify its growth. With production capacities in China, and expanded facilities in Vietnam, Thailand and Cambodia, the powerhouse Taiwanese management-led entity works with more than a hundred material manufacturers while nurturing close ties with global exporter Guang Der Group Holding.

Applying virtual reality software in its design process last year, WW Holding significantly reduced the cost and time to obtain design and material approvals from clients. All product information and production plans can now be securely and conveniently sent online for agile feedback and collaboration. Its long-standing partnership with Nike, which involves production, distribution and retail activities, has also bolstered its niche expertise and research and development (R&D) capabilities. Reinvesting a significant part of its earnings into R&D, WW Holding now seeks more partners to create synergies that promote growth.

International brands haven’t read the Chinese market correctly. Mass-market fashion in China has not followed the traditional western-consumer model, where cheap clothes are bought by shoppers from Walmart or Target or Primark. In China, nearly all value-end of the market is now found online.

Moreover, young Chinese consumers are far less brand conscious than generally assumed. They are accustomed to choosing based on looks alone, traditionally from small sellers selling nameless, unbranded clothes at wholesale clothing markets. International mass-market brands have lost out partly due to the first-mover advantage of domestic brands, which produce cut-price fashion at ultra-fast speeds.

So the young generation doesn’t necessarily like foreign brands just for namesake, compared to the older generation. With the older generation, the semiotics of a purchase and what it would mean to people around them and their social standing were more important than the actual functionality of a product. This is not seen nearly as much with Chinese millennials.

However at the luxury end of the market, there is a huge premium on a Made in Europe label. Even here, many international companies entering the Chinese market have mistakenly regarded big eastern-seaboard cities like Shanghai as being representative of the rest of the country – which is far from being the case.

President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to meet in November at the G20 summit in Argentina. They will discuss ways to end the US tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods and the $110 billion in reciprocal import duties China imposed on US goods. The two countries will also sign a deal at the summit to avoid escalating the tariffs on $200 billion in Chinese goods once January rolls in. If no deal is made, new import duties will be levied on yet another $267 billion in Chinese goods.

This fourth tranche of import duties would likely hit a broader swathe of consumer goods such as apparel and personal electronics. Retailers and their suppliers are also trying to mitigate the tariff impact on shoppers in 2019. The nation’s largest retailer Walmart is trying to take out cost where it can to lessen any price increases. David Murphy, a partner at trade-focused legal firm GDLSK, has suggested various ways for importers and shippers to offset the tariff impact. These include sharing the cost of tariffs between importers and shippers and removing third-party fees from the landed costs of Chinese goods. Importers could also get waivers if Chinese-made components are assembled in and shipped from a third country to the U.S. or the third country's components are just assembled in China.

Manufacturers of synthetic fibers are likely to focus on the Asia Pacific market owning to fewer regulations and rising demand. The demand for these fibers is considerably high in North America thus making it the leading market for synthetic textile fibers trailed by Latin America and Europe in the exact order The market is likely to mature over the coming years owing to environmental regulations in the region and the rising use of green fibers.

Synthetic textile fibers are abundant in nature as they are not dependent on any agricultural crops. Some of synthetic textile fibers are stain and rot resistance, easy to wash and dry, are resistant to pests and insects, and they pick up dyes very easily. The other factors that are expected to drive the demand for synthetic textile fiber market are its durability and low cost.

Sympatex will launch a new line of spun-dyed laminates. These apparel innovations from Sympatex, made with fully recyclable textile surface materials, combine the advantages of both raw material recycling processes and spun-dyed technology. With this dye technology, water consumption can be reduced around 75 per cent, while decreasing the use of chemicals by as much as 90 per cent.

The articles, which are ideally-suited for outdoor and ski applications, and even for the fashion world, are 100 per cent water- and wind-proof, in addition to optimally breathable, thus offering further proof that it’s possible to combine sustainability and performance in a single product.

With this spun-dyed technology, instead of adding the dye to the finished textile product, it’s mixed into the raw material granulate. This not only improves the penetration intensity of the dye in the thread. The process also offers significant advantages with respect to color harmony and the reproducibility of the hue.

Dye processes used by the textile industry account for around 20 per cent of the world’s industrial water contamination. This is despite the fact that polyester dye technologies, which conserve significantly more water than traditional dye processes, while massively reducing the use of chemicals, have been available for some time.

India and Vietnam have set a bilateral trade target of $15 billion by 2020. Ram Nath Kovind, President of India, called for cooperation between the two countries in agriculture, pharmaceuticals, textiles and IT. He said agricultural products from Vietnam already occupy over 45 per cent of India-Vietnam bilateral trade and there is immense potential for bilateral cooperation in agro-processing, agro-chemicals, farm machinery, bio-technology and high-tech farming.

He also sought cooperation from Vientam in the Indian pharmaceuticals industry for providing quality health-care, medicines and medical devices for the public health system at an affordable cost. Kovind highlighted significant opportunities between the two sides in the oil and gas, power, infrastructure and renewable energy sectors. Stating that the Indian IT services, including digital economy and fin-tech sector have much to offer to Vietnamese growth, he suggested encouraging start-up sectors and innovation based industry to leverage each other.

Luxury brand LVMH is planning to speed up its own digital transformation through the Retail Lab, an internal organisation set up to help the labels owned by Bernard Arnault's group develop innovative solutions in the digital and retail field. The Lab is designed to help the group's labels, whether in the fashion, wine-making, cosmetics, watch-making or selective distribution sector, in their digital and retail transformation.

The project commenced a year ago, when the group hired Gautier Pigasse to set up, launch and manage the LVMH Retail Lab. Pigasse is a digital marketing and customer experience expert, and has worked with several brands and major consumer product and media groups, notably in the luxury sector, on their multi-channel strategies. The project manager will bolster this project by sourcing and testing new technologies.

ICA Bremen conducted its ‘Cotton Classing’ training course, in association with the Spinners & Weavers Association of Korea (SWAK), between October 22- 26, 2018. Established in response to industry demand in 2014, this five-day training course was delivered by Karsten Froese from ICA Bremen and focused on the classing of US and other Upland raw cottons. This year’s training took place at the KOTITI testing and research institute in Gyeonggi-do.

The training course was based on approved standard procedures for visual grading and staple pulling. Various theories were covered along with learning about the agreed standards and regulations for quality evaluation according to the rules of the International Cotton Association Ltd.

The next ICA Bremen ‘Learning about Machinery’ and ‘Classing & Testing’ training programs will be held in 2019. ICA Bremen, in addition to its annual training programs, plans to continue delivering more bespoke training courses to the cotton community at other global locations.

US-based For Days is turning the idea of consumption on its head. This closed-loop clothing line cuts through the fashion industry’s textile-waste problem with a direct-to-consumer, zero-waste membership model. A customer can return a shirt and get a replacement. The new shirt comes with a pre-paid envelope for sending back the old, which For Days will sanitize, julienne and reinforce the recycled with virgin fibers before blending everything into fresh yarn for future products. At the end of a year, customers can opt to keep their shirt (or shirts) or choose to renew for another year at a discounted rate.

For Days, adopts only 100 per cent American-grown, GOTS-certified organic cotton. Besides expanding its assortment with new colors and styles, along with new product categories, For Days is embarking on a zero-waste manufacturing initiative for 2019 that leverages technology, renewable energy and water reclamation programs and innovative principles of biomimicry. This refers to the design and production of materials and systems that approximate those found in nature.

The company is also designing its own factory to verticalize production and hasten the advent of the circular economy. More than 15 million tons of textile waste is generated annually in the United States. The average American tosses nearly 80 pounds of used clothing every year.

The Fespa conference in the UK provided some practical guidance on how to move towards further automation to see the future of robotics and additive manufacturing that will allow for further miniaturisation and hopefully will contribute to bring manufacturing back to the UK. Zero tooling has enabled minimal set up as files are just run from the cutting queue and the sheet positioning is automated by scanning the sheet to pick up on optical marks to register.

While Britain has been responsible for the invention of numerous products including the mobile phone, lithium ion batteries, plasma TV it hasn’t been successful in manufacturing any of them. The conference was the perfect venue to discuss the opportunities that will result from greater automation and the integration of computer systems from web through to production across the print sector.

The focus of the Manufacturing Technology Center is to bridge the valley of death which advances the technology readiness level process to reach full capability, from university research through to full scale manufacturing. The center has 100 apprentices working on metallurgy, robotics, laser engineering, 3D printing and additive manufacturing. The MTC has strong links in the academic community and aims to facilitate the best use of intellectual skills. The organisation has close ties to many research-based universities.