Sustainable innovations spark interest at Avantex Paris

The recently concluded international show assembled around forty prominent firms and organisations from eight countries with a potential discovered by visitors who were keen on high-tech fashion.

"Avantex Paris is not just a meeting place for business. It is a real hub for trading ideas that focus on research, investigation and marketing of solutions to address the challenges facing the clothing industry, both today and tomorrow. Incidentally, I am delighted with the European response to the call from the exhibition, which was the first to combine fashion and technology in the textile industry, regarding major issues such as durability, sustainability, traceability and all expectations of the active consumer in the digital era," said Michael Scherpe, president of Messe Frankfurt France, exhibition organiser.

"I’m mega happy, there was no-one but true professionals, not merely curious onlookers but many potential customers. The synergy among exhibitors is excellent; they may become future partners. We expanded our portfolio of real customers from abroad, in particular from Asia. Thanks to Avantex, we will be going to London next month," said Cléa Pola, the founder of the slow-fashion and eco-friendly producer Coco & Rico, an exhibitor.

"We saw huge numbers of high-calibre visitors," said Magnus Hellström, marketing and business director at Coloreel, demonstrating new colouring unit for embroidery machines. "We are delighted; we met our target group, distributors. Certain came from China, Japan, Taiwan and India but also from Eastern Europe, which seems to be the trend at the moment."

New types of clothing distribution, very close to consumer wishes, were unveiled, in particular by the European Centre for Innovative Textiles and its Future Apparel Experience by CETI, a place for encouraging experiments with IoT tools. Great work has also been done in this area by Tô & Guy, a French firm that combines co-design, printing and augmented reality to achieve greater customisation.

The Avantex Fashion Pitch declared a young American start-up called Nineteenth Amendment, which intends to revolutionise the retail business for fashion products, as the winner.  As every year, the fair was the epicentre for prolonged debates and discussions focusing on textiles and fashion markets. Various round tables were dedicated to a myriad of topics including ecology, functionality, social networks, the role of influencers and new manufacturing processes or major shifts in distribution channels etc. (RR)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India