Interviews
Automobile fabric manufacturers shaken from their reverie
06 Jun '09
2 min read
The business of technical textiles which had started to find its moorings since the last few years and is available to a wide range of applications ranging from automobiles and medicals to soil conservation, etc, has begun to totter due to the impact of the recessionary trends and the slowdown in the ground zero of the crisis; US.
The effect of the crisis has been far reaching on sales to the automobile sector in particular, which has borne the highest brunt, what with the consumer digging his hands deeper in to his/her pocket and this clearly is visible from the fact that two of the big five global automobile companies have gone in to bankruptcy protection.
North Carolina, which is one of the hubs of the textile industry in the US, and more so particularly of the technical textiles sector, is the worst victim of the ongoing recessionary trends and slowdown in sales in the automobile sector.
Since the times, Asian countries began to give US manufacturers a run for their money, by mass producing apparel and textiles at competitive rates, the North Carolina textile companies moved towards producing functional fabrics, more so for the automobile sector, since it works on a tight production and inventory schedule.
These automobile fabric manufacturers were sitting tight and quite confident, with the knowledge that this was product category which cannot be outsourced to third countries, due to the tight schedules which seat manufacturers have to adhere to, even delivering them four hours prior to a production batch, which is not possible from a overseas base.
But the slowdown has shaken them from this reverie and are facing the stark fact of depleting sales on one hand and an increase in inventory levels on the other. The only saving grace for these automobile fabric manufacturers could come from the three Japanese automobile manufacturers who have set up bases in the US.
The effect of the crisis has been far reaching on sales to the automobile sector in particular, which has borne the highest brunt, what with the consumer digging his hands deeper in to his/her pocket and this clearly is visible from the fact that two of the big five global automobile companies have gone in to bankruptcy protection.
North Carolina, which is one of the hubs of the textile industry in the US, and more so particularly of the technical textiles sector, is the worst victim of the ongoing recessionary trends and slowdown in sales in the automobile sector.
Since the times, Asian countries began to give US manufacturers a run for their money, by mass producing apparel and textiles at competitive rates, the North Carolina textile companies moved towards producing functional fabrics, more so for the automobile sector, since it works on a tight production and inventory schedule.
These automobile fabric manufacturers were sitting tight and quite confident, with the knowledge that this was product category which cannot be outsourced to third countries, due to the tight schedules which seat manufacturers have to adhere to, even delivering them four hours prior to a production batch, which is not possible from a overseas base.
But the slowdown has shaken them from this reverie and are facing the stark fact of depleting sales on one hand and an increase in inventory levels on the other. The only saving grace for these automobile fabric manufacturers could come from the three Japanese automobile manufacturers who have set up bases in the US.
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
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