Wool industry adopts tie-up trend to raise Merino wool demand
18 Jul '05
3 min read
The Australian wool industry is building alliances with key fashion designers, retailers and clothing manufacturers around the world to increase demand for Australian Merino wool.
This was the message from Australian Wool Innovation Limited (AWI) Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Dr Len Stephens to woolgrowers at the Australian Sheep and Wool Show in Bendigo, Victoria, on Saturday.
"Over the past 12 months AWI has really focused on building alliances with commercial partners in the apparel market around the world - designers, retailers, fabric manufacturers and garment makers," he said.
"These are the people who make the decisions about what fibres are used and these are the people who we need to work with to build demand for Australian Merino wool."
Dr Stephens said that as part of this renewed push, more than $10 million in product marketing initiatives for Australian Merino wool had been approved by the AWI Board during the 2004/05 financial year.
"This is aimed at getting innovative products and improvements in the performance of Merino wool to retailers and designers, and includes everything from the development of new fabrics to point-of-sale marketing materials," he said.
In Australia, AWI has worked with celebrated fashion designer Akira Isogawa and knitter DPK to develop a new featherweight wool fabric, used by Akira in his widely acclaimed Paris and Australian Mercedes Fashion Week collections.
Also locally, AWI is working with young womenswear retailer and manufacturer Kookai to use the best available technology and expertise to develop a new softer knitwear range.
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.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation Limited (TSllC Ltd)")
.jpg?tr=w-120,h-60,c-at_max,cm-pad_resize,bg-ffffff "Taiwan Textile Federation (TTF)")
