The United Nations has launched a project to support the growth of women entrepreneurs in Cambodia. This is part of a strategy for poverty reduction, social well-being and sustainable economic growth. The project aims at creating an enabling policy and business environment that enhances women entrepreneurs’ access to capital. Women entrepreneurs are seen as true agents of change whose innovations can lift companies, communities, and countries and Cambodia is committed to improving their prospects, unleashing women entrepreneurs’ full potential and putting gender equality squarely upfront.

As one of the activities under the innovative finance part of the project, a fund has been launched. The fund will support companies to pilot innovative digital and financial solutions that help improve access for women-owned or led micro, small and medium-sized enterprises. Successful applicants will be provided with technical assistance, mentorship and early stage co-funding to pilot and upscale their solutions.

Women-owned businesses have been on the rise over the past 20 years in the Asia Pacific region. In Cambodia, around 65 per cent of micro-sized businesses are women-led. However, when it comes to upscaling their business women entrepreneurs across the Asia-Pacific region, face significantly higher barriers including discriminatory legislative framework, limited access to finance, lack of opportunities for capacity development and discriminatory socio-cultural norms and beliefs.

Texworld USA will be held July 22 to 24, 2019. The event promises to be a vital resource for a range of textiles as well as inspiration for the coming seasons. The show offers a host of opportunities for apparel professionals. The trade show is the largest sourcing event on the East Coast for apparel fabric buyers, research and development experts, designers, merchandisers and sourcing professionals. The event will feature textiles in 16 different product groups, including cotton, functional fabrics and knits.

In addition to a diverse group of products, the show will offer educational forums, networking and trend direction. Texworld USA will deliver ample opportunity to learn about the textures, colors and patterns set to drive the next few seasons in the US market as well as abroad. The show will provide an in-depth look at trends for the fall/winter 2020-’21 season. Additionally, the show will feature a panel with trend experts to provide further insights into the looks likely to take off in the months and years to come.

Seminars will feature a full slate of expert panels on topics related to sustainability, sourcing and product development. Texworld USA will provide assistance for attendees needing help navigating the show’s specialized country pavilions, searching for both low-minimum and high-volume options, and locating eco-friendly resources.

A textile and ready-to-wear summit was held in Turkey, April 16 to 17, 2019. The aim of the summit was to provide a sectoral network, to bring together purchasing teams and the manufacturer and to take a concrete step in university-industry cooperation. It discussed the check list in order to make the industry more value-added and competitive. The importance of digitalization and design was emphasized. The e-commerce market in Turkey is growing at 31 per cent a year. The event stressed the possibility of using digitalization as a lever to increase the competitiveness of the small and medium industry. It stressed that digitalization is not a luxury but a necessity.

Turkey has a 3.4 per cent share of the world’s ready-to-wear trade. The country attaches great importance to exports as an industry. Women have a 40 per cent employment share in Turkey’s textile and ready-to-wear industry. This industry is the second largest industry contributing to the country’s employment. Turkey is the sixth largest ready-to-wear supplier worldwide. In the last 40 years production and export in the textile industry has shifted from low value-added products to high value-added products. The textile and ready-to-wear industry in Turkey is an important bridge linking past to future, tradition to innovation.

While cotton growing and ginning is a top agricultural export industry in Tanzania, the sector has been struggling for the past 50 years. Two main factors have led to the stagnation in productivity in the cotton sector. One problem is a general lack of knowledge about how to best operate within the global industry, the other is a lack of cohesiveness between sector groups. Small cotton ginning operations compete with each other from year to year. This competition makes them unwilling to contract farmers for the long-term. Contract farming for the cotton sector in Tanzania has gained popularity. Contracts would give the farmers the training and knowledge needed to improve practices and output. Better agricultural practices, including the correct use of pesticides and improved cotton seeds, can significantly increase annual cotton production. This increase will improve the livelihoods of individual farmers and the industry overall.

A three-part contract farming model was developed within the past few years, involving local government, farmers and ginners. Each district helps farmers negotiate with ginners, advocating for the interests and needs of farmers. Farmers then make arrangements to supply one ginner with cotton and, in turn, the ginners provide training and other services to the farmers.

From shifts in shopping habits to evolving technology affecting the production and manufacturing processes, supply chains are being transformed across the world. But often this is at the expense of labor standards. Fashion’s business models are heaping immense pressure on labor standards across the industry’s vast supply chains. Business models are the distinguishing feature of certain brands such as Zara or Uniqlo, says Ethical Trading Initiative.

Fast fashion is an industry based on high volumes and low prices. Most companies rely on a huge web of suppliers, typically in low wage economies, that are able to bring them the scale and speed required for a social media-driven market. That speed is also the pain point for those suppliers, whose manufacturing offer brings in extremely low margins. When orders increase at speed, sometimes doubling overnight, these manufacturers then put extreme pressure on their workers to do unpaid overtime.

More broadly, the industry’s ethical problems go beyond labor issues. It is becoming increasingly important to consumers that brands they buy are thinking about their environmental output. Consumers are attracted to companies that believe in reducing plastics and improving the environment. Twenty per cent of young people’s fashion decisions in the UK are driven by perceptions of responsible behavior.

The RACOP 2-NW is Karl Mayer’s new raschel machine for nonwoven bonding. This efficient nonwoven machine processes fibrous webs to stitch-bonded nonwovens, and scores points by technological advantages. Unlike their chemically bonded counterparts, these nonwovens are elastic, voluminous and, thus, virtually textile. Moreover, the stitch-bonding process requires considerably less energy than thermal methods. In addition, the RACOP 2-NW has an excellent price-performance ratio and high flexibility. A RACOP 2-NW can produce a fabric in a gauge of E 14 intended for the application field of heating textiles.

The machine for the terry segment can produce a revolutionary textile novelty: a double-face warp-knitted terry fabric with a soft velour layer made from microfibers on the outer face, and an absorbent surface made from cotton on the inner side. This article for bathrobes is not only functional and stylish, it also shows the advantages in terms of environmental protection compared to woven counterparts, and this is due to the machine technology used for its manufacture.

Karl Mayer is a world market leader in textile machinery building. In 2014 Karl Mayer started a comprehensive investment program with the objective to strengthen the company’s production section in order to face challenges of the future.

Klopman will exhibit at Techtextil, Germany, May 14 to 17, 2019. Klopman is a European company in work wear fabrics. The company produced more than 1.5 million meters of sustainable fabrics in 2018.

Klopman’s K-Flame flame-retardant fabric is designed to offer resistance to heat, flames and welding as well as giving antistatic and electric arc protection. The K-Flame range has excellent performance in terms of breathability and absorption of body moisture. K-Flame XTRA 165 is the ultimate choice for warm, humid environments, as it has proven to be softer and more comfortable than other fabrics because it does not stick to the skin. The fabric also limits the risk of skin irritations reaching the highest values in working conditions and quickly absorbs sweat like no other in its category. The product is designed specifically for the needs of the petrochemical, chemical and metallurgical mining industry. The special inherent flame-retardant fiber guarantees prolonged resistance, without compromising on comfort and breathability even in the hottest climates.

Greenwear is another Klopman product range. Greenwear is produced by using polyester obtained from recycled plastic bottles. The Greenwear range is a concrete expression of the company’s attention to the environment and the investment in production that makes Klopman a pioneer in the production of sustainable fabrics for work wear.

The Italian textile industry has adopted blockchain in a big way. The technology enables use of a distributed database in management of shareable transactions between manifold nodes of a network. Every block of the chain tracks, monitors and authenticates the movements that concern it to make a network which guarantees the traceability of all transactions. The technology uses cryptographic tools in order to ensure the maximum security per individual transaction. Blockchain technology is aimed at supporting the made in Italy project, protect its uniqueness and quality such as certifying the supply chain thanks to the mechanism of the shared register which enables attaining maximum security regarding counterfeit stabs. In particular the traceability of the tanning and textile sector chain by the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) will add something significant to protect the made in Italy goods. Some Italian companies have already started applying blockchain technology in their production chain.

The traceability of the supply chain, through the use of Blockchain technology, is expected to contribute to protecting the Made in Italy product, certifying its effective implementation in Italy, contributing to increasing consumer confidence, also creating conditions of transparency, guarantee for employment and environmental protection.

For the three months to March 31, Esprit sales were down 11.6 per cent in local currency on the same period a year earlier. However, it marks an improvement on the 12.4 per cent reduction in retail space occupied by the fashion brand.

While the quarter recorded a revenue decline, the rate of decline continues to narrow quarter-on-quarter, reflecting a positive trend of improvement. During the first quarter to September 30, sales declined 16.2 per cent, in the next quarter by 12.5 per cent and now to 11.6 per cent. The improvement was mainly driven by Germany which accounts for the largest share of the group’s sales. For Asia Pacific, the higher rate of revenue decline in the second quarter and third quarter was mainly due to the group exiting Australia and New Zealand, where all stores were closed by the end of last September as part of Esprit’s restructure.

The closure of loss-making stores will exert pressure on the company’s topline in the short term, and as other initiatives are still work-in-progress at this stage, it will require time to make the corresponding improvements in brand and product visible to customers for attracting them back into Esprit stores.

Texcoat G4 is Baldwin Technology’s new precision application system for fabric finishing. This confers major benefits in terms of resource efficiency and sustainable production. The system enables a continuously high quality and productive textile finishing process with zero chemistry waste and drastically reduced water and energy consumption. The innovation drastically improves both the process and product quality, while saving time, valuable resources and contributing to a sustainable future. The non-contact spray technology brings numerous advantages compared to conventional methods of applying finishing chemistry. The chemistry is uniformly distributed across the textile surface and is applied only where it is required – on one or both sides of the fabric. This is highly beneficial when applying water repellants on laminated fabrics, as it eliminates the problem of chemistry affecting the quality of the adhesion layer. Further, the non-contact technology eliminates chemistry dilution in wet-on-wet processes, allowing full control of maintaining consistent chemistry coverage rates. Additionally, with no bath contamination during the finishing process, there is zero downtime during color or fabric changeovers.

The TexCoat G4 can process a wide range of low-viscosity water-based chemicals, such as water-repellants, softeners, anti-microbials and more, in wet-on-wet applications and lamination processes. Additionally, the system is completely sealed, encapsulating all aerosols and thereby securing a healthy working environment for the operator.