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At the opening ceremonies for the new World Headquarters, a textile executive describes how important the services offered by Cotton Incorporated are to his business every day.
The dedication of the new Cotton Incorporated World Headquarters this past April was an excellent opportunity for members of the textile industry to get a good look at this world class facility in Cary, NC. Visitors got to tour some of the most advanced textile research laboratories in the world.
"There is so much now emanating from Cary that it becomes a major undertaking just to educate the industry about all of our activities and how we can help everyone from yarn spinners to retailers," Dean B. Turner, Senior Vice President, Global Product Marketing, explains. "It's an inherent part of our effort to increase the profitability and consumption of cotton."
The best way to gauge the success of these activities is to listen to someone who benefits from them on a regular basis. Those attending the ribbon cutting ceremony at World Headquarters got to do just that. Featured speaker Jerry Rowland, president of National Textiles, eloquently described "what a day of mine could be and how many times Cotton Incorporated is discussed.
"When I go into work in the morning, the first thing I do is look at all the laydowns we've had in the last week, and it all comes out of Cotton Incoporated's EFS® Cotton Fiber Management System," Rowland began. "I look at all the cotton we've received from all the suppliers, exactly what the attributes are and how many discounts we've had and how many rejects we've had." This, he noted, is all available through EFS software.
"Then we get ready to have a new ventures meeting and we talk about the Murata Vortex yarn spinning machine," Rowland said. This advanced air jet spinning system is being intensely studied at Cotton Incorporated for making 100 percent cotton yarns. "One of my technical people says we don't have to do a lot of work because Cotton Incorporated has already done it. We don't have to go run a lot of trials; we can just buy a machine, which we did.
"Then we talked about using spandex with cotton. A technical man brings out a 15-page report from Cotton Incorporated on all of the things that will go wrong when you run spandex. So we read that so we don't do anything wrong when we run spandex with cotton."
Rowland then described another meeting to discuss quality issues. With the plant busier than normal, the company experimented with its production and this led to difficulties. "All of a sudden, we had massive amounts of lint in the dyeing. We get all these samples and ran them down to Cotton Incorporated. Through their technical service team, we determined what caused the problem and developed a solution. You just don't understand how smart the people at Cotton Incorporated are until you get them to help you." Rowland observed.
"Then we looked at all of our shrinkage results. We run 6 million pounds a week of knit goods, and each lot weighs 15 to 35 hundred pounds, and we have to run shrinkage tests on every one of them," Rowland explained. "Well, Cotton Incorporated helped develop the Quick Wash PlusTM system, which allows you to check shrinkage in 10 minutes on each lot. It used to take about an hour with a big old washing machine. That's why we just bought 13 Quick Wash units."
It doesn't stop there. "Then I go into a product development meeting," he continued. "We talk about two or three knitted fabrics we developed, using Cotton Incorporated's formula, so we only have to run it one time before we get it right. We don't have to do like we used to and run it six, seven or eight times.
"Then," he went on, "I have customers like everybody else. I talk to the Sara Lee people and they've been reading the Lifestyle Monitor article Cotton Incorporated runs each Thursday in Women's Wear Daily." Rowland joked about how they were getting "all sorts of weird ideas about new products they want developed. So we work on that.
"I was then able take a coffee break for a minute, during which I looked at my calendar and see I had to go to the EFS Seminar and make a speech. But I saw something even more important that Cotton Incorporated is going to do. I can't wait. They've got an Economic Marketing Summit, and they're going to tell me exactly what price to fix cotton at," Rowland said with tongue firmly planted in cheek.
He even mused about the impact of Cotton Incorporated on his home life. "After I eat, I sit down and turn the TV on. The first thing I see is that beautiful 'Fabric of Our Lives' commercial.
"I appreciate Cotton Incorporated more than a lot of people do," Rowland surmised. "But everybody ought to appreciate it a whole lot."
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