PARIS — The European textile industry’s leading purveyors are facing mounting pressures, from high labor costs at home to cheaper products flooding the market from abroad, as they prepare to unfurl their wares at the Première Vision trade show here.
The lower-cost competition even follows them on their home turf because of Texworld, a fast-growing and important fair here that features less expensive textiles from outside Europe. Run by Messe Frankfurt, Texworld features mills from countries that have already claimed sizable shares of the textile business, including China, India, Taiwan, South Korea, and from North Africa.
European mills have been forced to adapt.
Daniel Faure, president of Première Vision, said that a growing number of European mills have delocalized production abroad, mostly in Eastern Europe, to compete with the rest of the world. The change has been incremental, but has gathered speed recently, Faure said.
Most of the delocalization has focused on textiles produced in large quantities, such as shirt fabrics, he said. Goods destined for high-end women’s ready-to-wear remain anchored in Europe because of their complexities.
Moving abroad, and the savings it brings, has given European mills more muscle to go head to head with the competition, Faure said. This is especially true since they have shored up quality and brought creativity and innovation to the table.
“European firms possess a certain know-how that the rest of the world doesn’t have,” he said. “They’ve built it up over the years. They have a sense of style. They have commercial relations. They do more than just execute. They can create.”
Not everyone, however, has the brawn to move operations far from home. Smaller companies have capitalized on their niche positioning, banking on their ability to produce textiles that are novel and of such high quality that they can’t be produced anywhere else. Faure offered the example of France’s grosgrain ribbon producers.
“The Chinese can’t produce the highest-quality grosgrain,” he said. “The best grosgrain ribbon comes from France, and even if it’s more expensive, people are willing to pay for it.”
Silk mousseline, too, remains strong for European firms. “Other countries can’t match it,” Faure said.
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He estimated that 30 percent of PV exhibitors are focused on niche markets.
“You don’t hear much about their success because they don’t create thousands of jobs,” Faure said. “But they are still standing tall.”
Faure sees an important evolution that may further help European firms. He said some large clothing companies are returning to Europe after moving briskly into China when quotas were lifted.
“A certain number of big European and American retailers bulled into Asia, and they had some quality problems,” he said. “Some are now coming back, at least for the high end.”
Although mills outside Europe have yet to match the Continent’s track record for exceptional skill, creativity and innovation, that, too, is changing. Michael Scherpe, president of Messe Frankfurt France, said many Asian mills that have traditionally catered to the mass market are trying to move upscale.
“That’s the direction that the whole market, in general, is moving in,” Scherpe said. “It’s human that people want to be better tomorrow than yesterday. So production gets better tomorrow from today.”
Scherpe noted that fashions have become increasingly sophisticated on a global scale, forcing every company to devote resources to improving their products in an effort to remain competitive.
The competition between PV and Texworld has created tensions between the two groups, eah accusing the other of trying to poach clients. Next year, Texworld will move its fair from La Defense, a business district west of Paris, to Le Bourget, just down the road from PV’s venue at Villepinte, which is sure to make the rivalry even stiffer.
“Texworld is a handicap for us,” PV’s Faure said. “I have a lot of complaints from exhibitors that people take their products to Texworld to have them copied.”
Scherpe said this would be a serious offense, and something he said the fair polices carefully.
Faure believes even the Chinese are beginning to feel the impact of counterfeiting and copying as Chinese companies introduce more of their own brands.
“Now the Chinese are copying other Chinese firms,” Faure said. “They are starting to see the consequences firsthand. The world is changing.”
Scherpe called this a result of greater efforts to create original products in China. Many firms have even hired creative directors from Europe, he added.