By J. Berrye Worsham
CARY, NC — In reporting Cotton Incorporated’s activities for 2004, this review will emphasize the broad spectrum of activities through which the company strives to make a difference to the industry in terms of profitability and end-user demand, both domestically and overseas.
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Here follows some of the highlights from the company’s divisions for 2004:
One of the tenets of Cotton Incorporated’s Strategic Marketing Plan is to build the demand for cotton worldwide. In May 2004, the Strategic Planning division organized and hosted, jointly with Cotton Council International, an international workshop on cotton promotion with the International Forum for Cotton Production (IFCP).
The three-year-old organization provides a means for countries to share research and information about cotton promotion strategies. With attendees from 10 countries, the event brought together key decision-makers in an attempt to catalyze members’ thinking about how to develop and implement consumer promotion programs in their own countries.
The three-day program drew upon Cotton Incorporated’s expertise in retail promotion, advertising and consumer marketing research, with the company’s own experts in these areas sharing strategies and examples for the program participants.
In 2004, the Global Product Marketing division significantly increased its efforts to license EFS® software to international mills. Working with Fiber Management Research and, increasingly, with the support of Cotton Council International, licensees have been added in Thailand, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Mexico.
The division introduced or expanded interaction with, and provided, the company’s full suite of services to key retail brands and manufacturers such as GAP, Nike, Tommy Bahama, Pacific Sunwear, Nordstrom, Mervyn’s, Levi/Dockers, Coldwater Creek, Eddie Bauer, St. John Knits, Cutter & Buck, Hot Kiss, Phillips-Van Heusen, May Co., Liz Claiborne and Target.
It also expanded interaction with key global sourcing operations and brands, including Wal-Mart, Perry Ellis, GAP and Target.
In conjunction with Textile Research, GPM expanded the Importer Support Education program class schedule which yielded a significant, nearly 15 percent increase in total attendance over 2003.
Advertising, marketing
The Advertising Department was involved in many projects during 2004.
After more than 15 years, Cotton Incorporated retired its highly successful The Fabric of Our Lives™ advertising campaign in 2004. It was clearly time to go to the next step and communicate to young women that cotton is the contemporary, fashionable and desirable choice for their wardrobes.
Working closely with the company’s new agency, DDB New York, a team of interviewers hit the road to visit young women in their homes around their country, go into their closets and hear what they had to say about their clothes. The team visited women in Dallas, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago and New York.
DDB and Advertising took these insights and molded them into seven television commercials and 12 print ads, which encompassed the launch phase of the company’s new advertising effort. For example, women’s love of denim jeans led to a TV spot that highlighted the need for multiple pairs of jeans to suit different occasions. The tag line: “You can never have enough jeans.”
The Fashion Marketing Department gained great visibility with its involvement in New York at the Olympus Fashion Week, February 2004. A custom-built booth featured cotton fabrics, creating an inviting space for representatives of the press, designers, manufacturers and retailers to gather and meet with Cotton Incorporated’s fashion trend forecasters.
Based on this success, a decision was made to participate in the Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios during the Los Angeles Fashion Week in October 2004.
In addition, the Fashion Marketing department expanded its home area. Recognizing the unprecedented growth in the home furnishings industry during the past several years, with consumers lavishing more attention and money on their homes than ever before, a Home Initiative was created. This initiative will allow Cotton Incorporated to serve its clients better at the manufacturing, design and retail levels.
An e-newsletter, Content, was developed as well, to communicate the latest information from Cotton Incorporated to its key home furnishing accounts. Each issue contains the latest color and fabric trends based on research conducted around the world.
Content also contains information on research and development fabrics, as well as market research on consumer attitudes towards cotton home products.
With the reality that the majority of manufacturing and sourcing is now based in Asia, Fashion Marketing created a new staff position, senior trend specialist, based in the company’s Los Angeles office, which will have a direct sphere of influence in that region.
Marketing Communications always asks, “What else can we do to promote cotton?” In 2004, that “What else?” was building upon past opportunities and developing new ones.
When Cotton Incorporated introduced its new advertising campaign in 2004, the challenge was how to get the word out, editorially, to the consumer. The solution was to create a news story about denim, inspired by one of the company’s new commercials.
This Video News Release (VNR) told the story of the celebrity influence on jeans sales and the growing trend towards “premium” denim. The VNR was distributed across the country to television news directors, ultimately reaching more than 5 million U.S. consumers.
To create new buzz during New York Fashion Week, Marketing Communications formed a partnership with Knit New York and W Hotels, hosting a “Knit-a-Porter” — cotton knitting lessons for editors and celebrities in a special backstage VIP lounge.
The department also worked with young up-and-coming designers who primarily use cotton in their collections. In 2004, Marketing Communications partnered with street wear brand, Triple 5 Soul, to launch the Ludlow Residency, a new program to foster and promote emerging designers.
In 2004, Retail Marketing gained exposure for the Seal of Cotton® by continuing to work with key retailers including Federated Department Stores, Brooks Brothers, JC Penney and Wal-Mart.
Promotional project
A hugely successful partnership program with Brooks Brothers was rolled out in Spring 2004. The promotion highlighted a key cotton product — the Brooks Brothers Golden Fleece Performance Polo, which is one of the retailer’s signature items.
An expanded color palette, 30 to be exact, brought newness to the men’s, women’s and boys’ lines. In addition, through textile innovation, the 100 percent Golden Fleece Performance Polo was specially treated to resist shrinking, fading and pilling, and maintain shape retention.
During the month of May, consumers were rewarded for making multiple purchases of the Golden Fleece Performance Polo. To communicate the synergy which exists between the two brands, the Seal of Cotton and relevant cotton messaging was incorporated into a multi-faceted marketing platform, consisting of national newspaper advertising, product-specific direct mail, Web site content and e-mail, extensive in-store signage and store window merchandising.
Research projects
In 2004, the Agricultural Research department conducted 211 cooperative research projects through The State Support Program and 168 in-house or cooperative research projects through The Core Research Program.
One key initiative undertaken by the department in 2004 was to find a consistent way of recording costs and field operations for cotton farmers. A search was initiated for record-keeping packages, and all available software ordered. Agricultural Research chose two companies: MapShots, Inc. (field and production records) and Redwing Business Systems, Inc. (accounting) to develop a joint software package.
The result of this project is that cotton producers now have a software program that gives them management information at their fingertips, and allows them to enter all their data into one place where it can be stored and made available for whichever report needs to be run.
Final beta testing is planned this year, and the cotton version of software should be widely available to producers in 2006.
Improving fiber, fabric and yarn testing methods was a key objective for Fiber Quality Research in 2004. The department worked with outside researchers at the University of Texas, and the International Textile Center at Texas Tech University, in applying digital imaging measurement to fabric smoothness appearance assessments after laundering.
For manufacturers of cotton pants and shirts, suppliers of chemicals that impart smoothness to cotton fabrics and garments, and retailers that specify smoothness performance on the products they sell, objective rating techniques provide more reliable and reproducible values.
During 2004, FQR licensed an international textile equipment manufacturer to market one of the technologies for smoothness grading. This equipment will soon be available worldwide.
In 2004, Textile Research and Implementation (which consists of Fiber Processing Research, Fabric Development, Nonwovens Research, Textile Chemistry Research and Dyeing and Finishing) held 627 meetings with domestic and international mills and manufacturers, providing technical information as well as research implementation and mill trials.
The department also handled 24,450 requests for samples from FABRICAST and the Women’s Wear Initiative.
The department, in 2004, developed the next generation of wrinkle-resistant 100 percent cotton products. The new technology improves the wear life of durable press cotton garments, making the fabrics stronger longer as well as more resistant to abrasion and color loss.
A provisional patent application has been filed with the assistance of Administration in order to protect the technology, and the name “TOUGH COTTON” was developed and registered as a trademark. As a result, there is considerable interest in the technology from well-known manufacturers and brands.
Durable press finishing has always been a balance between appearance and performance weighed against strength and wear life. With this latest technological development from TRI, the scales are now tipping even more in favor of cotton.
In the past two years, Fiber Management Research has managed the installation and growth of the Engineered Fiber Selection® (EFS® System of software programs and services from 20 to 28 systems internationally — the majority in the Far East.
In 2004, the EFS® System was successfully installed in three companies: PT APAC INTI CORPORA in Indonesia; Nang Yang Textile Co., Ltd. in Thailand; and Monno Fabrics Ltd. in Bangladesh.
Coordinating and bringing three companies on-line virtually at the same time is no small achievement. Installation and training took place in Singapore in early October.
The success of the project was due to the joint efforts of FMR and its training department, and Global Product Marketing.
Looking towards 2005, the FMR division is making plants to attend the EFS® System Conference in Turkey in April. Additionally, conferences in the Far East are being considered.
As always, the goal of FMR in 2005 is to continue to market and increase the consumption of U.S. cotton internationally.
J. Berrye Worsham is president and CEO of Cotton Inc., Cary, NC.
