Textile Insight

Case in point, Unifi is expanding global capabilities to be close to finished product. "That is first and foremost in terms of speed to market," says Jay Hertwig, VP, who mentions Unifi's new letter of intent with Guatemala. Additionally, Hertwig cites growth in Asia outside of China. Unifi now has sales offices in Taiwan, Vietnam and Turkey. From the tech perspective we need to be "closest to the finished form," states Bob Buck, technical fellow, Chemours, who advocates for "local for local" sourcing with strong collaboration between brand partners. "From the vantage point of the raw ingredient supplier, we're girded and ready to supply the need." Owen concludes, "It used to be that sourcing strategies were based on cost. Now time is money and that is driving sourcing decisions." The Time Factor "Speed to market is critical for brands and retailers and we recognize that our role has to help accelerate the process," says Joel Furey, COO, Noble Biomaterials. To that end, the company is focused on pre- development of fabric, inventory placement and flexible manufacturing solutions. According to Furey, a partnership program with about a half a dozen fabric makers offers ready made, fully developed product; this "Fast Turn Fabric," takes three to four months off the development cycle. "We started about a year ago and are seeing faster adoptions by brands," says Furey. "We feel the same pressure as lead times compress every year." Company strategy increasingly looks to place technology and inventory closer to supply chain partners as accurate forecasting and efficient inventory management become more important. "We make most product in U.S. but most product is finished in Asia; our typical process is Get Order, Make Order, Ship Order," explains Furey. "But if we can predict with more certainty and have closer proximity within the supply chain we can accelerate the process." Others are implementing similar strategies. Schoeller, for instance, has been working to reduce steps in production to short times. "We have made progress and can now achieve sub 10 weeks for coloration and finishing on some goods," states Kerns. Altbaier describes Downlite's two-part initiative to keep pace with market demands. "First, we need to be best in class when it comes to shipping direct to consumers who chose to buy directly from us, as well as through online marketplaces, including Amazon, Overstock, Wayfair, and others," he states. "Secondly, as a vast majority of our business is b2b, most, if not all of our retail partners are seeing the same buying trends, with many consumers shifting from brick and mortar to online. We need to be able to not only ship in our traditional means – to DCs and direct to store – but also directly to our retailers' end consumers. If we are best in class, we offer our retail partners the ability to by-pass a significant portion of their warehousing and shipping cost by taking on this burden ourselves." Michelle Lea, W.L. Gore & Associates, business leader, consumer oriented fabrics, says speed to market has become increasingly important across all categories of Gore's business. "This has been evident as Gore continues to expand relationships with lifestyle brands such as the recent Converse launch of Gore-Tex products and is also true for our traditional outdoor brands, who are looking to expand their product portfolio into more lifestyle applications." O "There continues to be a drive toward shorter and shorter development cycles, and speed is the future." Stephen Kerns, Schoeller Textil "Speed to market is critical for brands and retailers and we recognize that our role has to help accelerate the process." Joel Furey, Noble Biomaterials textileinsight.com January/February 2018 ~ Textile Insight • 27 "It used to be that sourcing strategies were based on cost. Now time is money and that is driving sourcing decisions." Lisa Owen, Microban

• Cover