I’m excited about the Globaltex tradeshow next week. Last week’s double whammy of Material World and the LA International Textile show have left me feeling mildly optimistic about the state of our industry. I saw several familiar faces and lots of great products. There was a lot of traffic through both shows as well as seminars, color forecasting workshops and a great session put on by Cotton, Inc.

Speaking of seminars, many of the FBI seminars we held in conjunction with Material World and the LA Textile show were full. In addition to the seminars, we had a lot of people stopping by to say “hello.” Speaking of which, Frances Harder, Ken Wengrod from FTC Commercial Corp and yours truly will be on one of the Globaltex discussion panels regarding Speed to Market, so please stop on by to say hello. I hear we’re even having cocktails!

I heard someone say “Why go to Globaltex if I’ve just been to the Textile Show?” Simple. You never know what you might find at Globaltex. It’s a relatively new show and there are a lot of great new vendors testing the tradeshow waters. They may be looking for a different venue to display their products or are looking for a different type of customer. Plus, it’s not just for textiles, trims, etc. I, of course, am excited about the technology vendors. But that’s just me. Who wouldn’t be when there are supply chain, CAD, PLM, ERP, RFID, product development, logistics and warehouse management systems to review! Fine, go ahead and look at all the pretty fabrics…I’ll be very happy looking at the shiny software.

Getting back to our panel discussion next Tuesday, 3:30 p.m. at Globaltex: The panel will discuss how the textile and clothing industry are reacting to the new demands from the retailer for rapid response, what are the new buying habits of retailers and end consumers and how they are changing the way they do business, as well as how this effects California fashion and the global market as far as importing and exporting. Topics covered will consist of: logistics and speed to market, product development, production and the financial impact. The panel will include a group of experts in International finance, logistics, importing and exporting, production and retailing.

Hope to see you there!

Jill Mazur is an independent apparel business and technology consultant working with Fashion Business, Incorporated. Email: jill@fashionbizinc.org