California Apparel News

The second annual run of Material World, the Miami Beach, Fla.-based textile show set to take place Sept. 10–12 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, will be held against a backdrop of dissension and malaise within the U.S. textile industry.

The show’s run comes on the heels of several announcements and reports issued by legislators and textile and apparel organizations over the summer.

bull; In July, the governors of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Alabama sent a letter to President Bush warning him of the dire state of the textile industry in those states. The governors urged the president to “use every tool at [his] disposal to combat [the textile industry] crisis.”

bull; The American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI) quickly added its support to the governors’ letter in its own letter to the president, which warned, “It is now timehellip;to step up to the plate on behalf of the American textile industry.”

bull; In August, four trade associations representing retailers, manufacturers and importers issued a letter urging the president to reject any additional legislative protection for the textile industry. The letter was issued by the American Apparel and Footwear Association (AAFA), the International Mass Retail Association (IMRA), the National Retail Federation (NRF) and the U.S. Association of Importers of Textiles and Apparel (USA-ITA). The letter argued that the U.S. textile industry, already operating under the benefit of protectionist laws, was unable to compete in the global market.

bull; Meanwhile, in August, North Carolina Republican senator Jesse Helms began fighting a final measure of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) legislation, which would allow Caribbean countries to begin dyeing and finishing U.S. fabric for assembly in CBI countries for re-import into the United States duty-free.

bull; In mid-August, 13 textile trade organizations sent an open letter in support of Senator Helms’ efforts.

The 13 associations are the Alabama Textile Manufacturers Association, American Cotton Shippers Association, American Fiber Manufacturers Association, American Sheep Industry Association, American Textile Machinery Association, American Textile Manufacturers Institute, Association of Georgia’s Textile, Carpet and Consumer Products Manufacturers, Knitted Textile Association, North Carolina Textile Manufacturers Association, Northern Textile Association, South Carolina Manufacturers Alliance, Textile Distributors Association and Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees (UNITE).

bull; In late August, the ATMI issued a 25-page report titled “Crisis in U.S. Textiles,” which traced the domestic textile industry’s steady decline to its present state back to the Asian economic crisis of 1997. The Asian economy brought a flood of cheap imports from Asia into the U.S. market, depressing the price of U.S. goods to a point from which the domestic industry has yet to recover, the report said. Furthermore, transshipments, illegal dumping of subsidized imports, smuggling at the U.S./Mexico border and a failure to open new markets for export have placed the U.S. textile industry in crisis, according to the report.

Against this backdrop, Material World will open with a minimum of 3,000 visitors expected and approximately 390 exhibiting companies, according to Tim von Gal, executive vice president of Urban Expositions, producers of Material World.

Material World has chosen its Florida location as a strategic point for apparel companies looking to take advantage of the CBI, which passed last year. The show’s debut last year fell short of meeting those expectations, according to many exhibitors who chose to attend the first show to help them break into or expand their CBI business.

To be fair, the ATMI report noted that the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has opened up the Mexican market for textiles, and the CBI seems poised to do the same.

The report tagged textile exports to Mexico last year at $6 billion, including cut pieces for assembly under the 807 program. That figure had tripled since NAFTA went into effect in 1995, according to the report.

This year, the show has partnered with American Apparel Producers Network, a network of apparel producers and suppliers that is setting up the Material World Contractors Network, to help connect domestic manufacturers with contractors in the CBI region and Latin America. The goal is to provide attendees with access to full-package producers in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to von Gal.

“The two buzz words in the industry are CBI and full package,” he said. “Fortunately we are positioned for both. Miami is the gateway to the Caribbean and Latin America.”

Wilmington, Del.-based fiber manufacturer DuPont is a sponsor of the three-day trade show and will be bringing both accredited mill partners and recommended vendors to the show, von Gal said.

A handful of California companies exhibited at the last show and several plan to return this year, including Impala Industries and B.N.B. International. Other companies, including Long Beach, Calif.-based Texollini, are joining the show for the first time this year.

Despite the recent dire predictions about the future of the U.S. textile industry, von Gal is optimistic, noting that now is the time for the U.S. apparel and textile industries to seek out new opportunities for growth.

“When things are tough you need to identify more and better selling opportunities,” von Gal said. “At the end of the day, there are not fewer end users of the product, there are more. We have to provide more competitive opportunities.”