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This article highlights the mixed turnout of a knitting conference that was held in Manchester, England in June 2005 with debates on several issues from the apparel producers. The north west of England may have a thriving technical textiles industry, but knitwear production is limited to either a handful of reasonable sized technical knitters. According to Dan Kane of Adidas, the reason why innovation always fail is because of a lack of consumer insight. While Quantum Clothing explained its strategy with regard to overseas knitwear sourcing and domestic lead times. Graham Makin of Quantum said that it can be achieved through a combination of low cost overseas production with garment dyeing in the Great Britain. Sue Randall of Marks & Spencer, spoke about the continued evolution and the change in the company to overseas sourcing. The percentage of returns for ladies knitwear had halved in a five year period from 2.3 percent down to 1.07 percent. Christoph Bergmann of Hugo Boss AG revealed the company's approach to sourcing and production of its 1 million men's knitwear pieces sold annually. Bergmann then described the production process, where the very first ideas from Hugo Boss designers are visualized on computer-aided design systems at its Swiss-based knitwear research facility. The laboratory is equipped with Stoll machines including Knit and Wear technology. Ian Hilton from Woolmark Company made a case for the continued and growing use of wool in knitwear. He acknowledged that the market share of wool in knitwear has been eroded as low priced cotton and synthetics have ousted wool knitwear. Italian-based nylon yarn specialist Contifibre talked about the challenges which affect the nylon yarn and synthetic knitted fabric industry. Company director Andrew Venables noted that energy, raw material and personnel costs are all increasing and said consumers are unwilling to pay premium prices for clothing. |
