Fiber Showdown: Is It Time for Cotton and Synthetics to Call a Truce?
January 5, 2012 When battle is first joined, the blood runs hot and energy levels are high. Motivation is at its peak and focus is easy to maintain. But as the competition drags on and on – as it has for decades with cotton and polyester – some begin to question whether the fight is worth it at all.
That’s not to say the competition won’t continue, or even that it shouldn’t continue. It’s simply a matter of perspectives changing over time. That happens at different speeds for different people, and the result is a fragmentation of what was once a unified front.
Cotton is currently undergoing such a transition. Since the late 1960s, it’s been losing market share to polyester, despite the continued increases in overall net cotton consumption due to the growing population. Few people believe that trend will be reversed any time soon, so the question has become: What are we going to do about it?
To be sure, the entire fiber world doesn’t consist of only cotton and polyester. They are the two biggest players by far, with 42% and 38% market share between them, while all other natural and synthetic fibers split the remaining 20%. There are some trendy niche fibers that get some attention as well, such as bamboo and hemp, but they aren’t considered serious competitors and won’t be any time in the near future. The time it would take to build capacity and a mass market for such products rules them out of the main event for now.
“We don’t want to overestimate the threat from regenerated cellulose,” says Jeff Silberman, executive director of The International Forum for Cotton Promotion (IFCP). “Those fibers will grow, but they only account for about 3% of consumption, and I don’t foresee any of them making a dent in overall market share. But the cotton industry can’t afford to get complacent about future threats.”
While they might not be a major long-term threat at this point, switching away from both cotton and polyester remains an option for mills in certain situations. “It’s interesting to note that fibers like Tencel, modal, and bamboo used to be very expensive in comparison to cotton, and thus they were difficult to sell in any large quantity,” says Kamil Saigol, director of Kohinoor Textile Mills. “But when the cotton prices went up as high as they were during the spike, it was actually cheaper to make these esoteric yarns.”
Possibly, the first challenge is finding a way to stop the bad press that the various types of cotton sometimes spread about each other (see story on page 16). The choices are:
- Do nothing, which is rapidly becoming a non-option.
- Try to unify the cotton family and rally natural fiber against synthetic competitors.
Forming a Battle Plan
Regardless of whether cotton can gather itself for the big showdown with polyester, it’s going to need a plan of attack. Many believe that cotton should mount a public relations campaign of its own, targeting synthetics for their environmentally unfriendly impact. The very fact that the fibers are made from oil – a word that carries a heavy, negative, emotional connotation for many people – gives cotton a major vulnerability to target.
Others, however, including Allen Terhaar of Cotton Council International, believe that any such efforts will simply work to the disadvantage of both industries.
“The cotton industry has already made great strides in putting forward positive factual information, and there is more to come via initiatives such as the Life Cycle Analysis, Field to Market and others,” Terhaar said on www.cotton247.com, Cotton International’s Web site. “Cotton is a great natural fiber and we have many positive attributes to emphasize. Cotton would not benefit from wearing the black hat or taking a negative approach. This is precisely the problem with the approach taken by certain factions that pit cotton against cotton with misinformation and negative messages.
“When one becomes a mudslinger, you must remember that there will always be another mudslinger out there who is faster and has deeper pockets. Let’s wear the white hat and give the trade and consumers the positive facts. We have a lot of them!”
Finally, there are those who believe that continuing this “us or them” fight with polyester is a lost cause, and say a type of truce should be called by focusing on blends of the two.
“I am not sure we have a fight against synthetics, but if we do, we already lost it some time ago,” says Andrew Macdonald, consultant to the Brazilian Association of Cotton Producers (ABRAPA). “Our task, in my humble opinion, is to work with synthetics and encourage blends. Insisting on 100% cotton for the mass market is unrealistic. We should use the name of cotton and the comfort it implies to ensure that at least the word ‘cotton’ appears on the label. That will guarantee our continued growth in consumption, even though we inevitably will lose market share. So the question is: How can we make synthetics our partners?” •
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