This speech was delivered at the 8th International Cotton Conference, Gdansk, Poland on September 23, 2005 by Dr. Sebahattin Gazanfer, Chairman of the IFCP. Written by Jeffrey Silberman, Executive Director of the IFCP, and Chairperson of the Textile Development and Marketing Department at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT).
The IFCP acts as a forum for exchanging and communicating cotton promotion ideas and techniques, in order to inspire domestically focused and domestically funded cotton promotion activity. Our objective is to gain market share at the expense of chemical fibers.
The IFCP has initiated and expanded several focused efforts in the area of cotton promotion since undertaking a new direction at the Gdansk ICAC Plenary Meeting in 2003. I would like to talk with you about some of those efforts today.
Beginnings
Globally, cotton had seen its market share of total fiber use slip from 48.3% in 1980 to 38.5% today. In India, cotton's market share was 77.5% in 1984, and had dropped 25 percentage points to 52% as of the year 2000. In China, cotton's market share was 66.8% in 1984 and had dropped to 30.5% in 2000, a fall of 36 percentage points.
Contrary to these developments, significant increases in cotton consumption at retail level had been witnessed elsewhere, especially in the USA, where sustained and successful promotional campaigns had already made the greatest contribution to the growth of cotton consumption during the last three decades. This was the most important and exemplary phenomenon, since cotton consumption in other regions such as in Europe and Far East, where the promotional activities had remained of limited scale, had increased little or even declined. It was the above mentioned circumstances which prompted the formation of the IFCP.
The IFCP formally began its activities at the 59th ICAC Plenary Meeting in Cairns, Australia in 2000, and it was immediately clear that in order to move forward, the Members of the newly formed organization would need to formalize the structure, and improve communication within the cotton community. National cotton organizations needed to understand the importance of cotton promotion, how the new organization would function, and to agree on the organization's mission. Core to this mission is to act as a clearinghouse for promotion techniques and ideas, to expand membership, and most importantly, to inspire cotton promotion. In 2003, an Executive Director was installed to carry out these tasks, elected by the Officers and the Membership.
Cotton Promotion Bulletin Website
The IFCP membership is global in scope with 17 members from 13 countries, and so the organization needed to find an efficient, cost-effective vehicle that would deliver two-way focused communication easily and thoroughly. That was the inspiration for the Cotton Promotion Bulletin website www.cottonpromotion.org. This would not be just another URL address, but an interactive marketing tool as well. The website is extremely user friendly, topical, and concise, and is specific to providing tools and ideas for promoting cotton. The information, refreshed constantly, is aimed at increasing consumption in producing, consuming, and trading countries. The IFCP does not differentiate nor compare cottons on the basis of producer origin. To the IFCP, cotton is cotton, and the only differentiation necessary is to make clear the difference between cotton and chemical fibers.
Launched in late 2003, the website is the IFCP virtual headquarters where members and non-members alike contribute ideas and exchange strategies that relate to cotton promotion. Cotton industry professionals, as well as others experienced in cotton promotion publish basic strategies that explain in very direct terms how to evaluate and initiate cotton promotion at limited expense. Some examples would include 'how to develop a cooperative advertising campaign', 'how to publicize cotton events', 'how to protect intellectual property', and more. We've recently added an interactive feature, called 'Cottonblog', where visitors to the site help us add to a feature called the 'Benefits of Cotton'. The response has been impressive.
The Cotton Promotion website also communicates information that members need to be aware of, including technology that will affect cotton markets, and competitive overviews of chemical fiber manufacturers, their products and their brands. I am pleased to report that our membership has contributed to the success of our website. The site now has a readership of approximately 70 page views per day (37 unique visitors/day), which is twice the readership of only six months ago, and frequently suggestions for articles come in from readers, members and non-members alike. If you have not been to the website, I encourage you to do so.
For the ICAC 62nd and 63rd Plenary Meetings, the IFCP published a Cotton Promotion Bulletin Annual, comprised of the core of information from the cotton promotion website. This enables those who are interested in promoting cotton to have a hard copy and user-friendly manual that delivers step-by-step instruction on how to execute those promotions.
Cotton Promotion Workshop
In May 2004, the IFCP held the first Cotton Promotion Workshop at Cotton Incorporated World Headquarters in Cary, North Carolina, sponsored by Cotton Incorporated, Cotton Council International, and the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC). Fourteen member organizations from ten countries sent representatives to this three-day workshop where Cotton Incorporated shared tried and true promotion techniques and ideas with the IFCP Members that were present, providing each group with materials and strategies to return back to their organizations, in order to implement cotton promotion activity in various degrees.
And yet, no new or expanded cotton promotion activity has occurred that we are aware of since the meeting in Gdansk. As for why there has not been more activity from the cotton industry itself, the reasons are many, but we can only assume that members of the cotton community have not yet seen the direct relationship between promotion at retail and cotton lint and yarn sales, even knowing and seeing the dramatic success that Cotton Incorporated has achieved in the U.S markets. Or perhaps they have not found the vehicle that they feel comfortable enough undertaking a promotion with. Programs like this take a while to catch on.
This clearly spotlights a fundamental task that the IFCP must perform in going forward, which is to specifically demonstrate the viability of promotion and to generate revenues for the sustainability of the organization itself.
Working with Education
In February 2005, thirteen seniors in their final academic semester from the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York were charged with developing a line of cotton-based products, specifically denim jeans for their senior project requirement. The primary project focus was to guide Textile Development and Marketing students through all of the processes involved in developing, manufacturing, and marketing a commercially viable product line and brand.
The secondary focus was to demonstrate how a domestically funded and domestically focused cotton promotion program could be developed at little or no cost, utilizing the resources of the IFCP. With the help of Cotton Incorporated, the creative staff of the IFCP website, and other industry professionals in the denim business donating their time, the project was a strong success. The group chose a blend of Australian/U.S. upland cotton, had it spun into yarn in Thailand, yarn dyed, woven, and finished in China, garments constructed in Hong Kong, and specialty-denim finishing treatments developed to the team's specification in California. They developed a brand strategy based on the market positioning and promotion strategy from discussions with Cotton Incorporated, and overall image and graphic design with help from the Creative Director and the Public Relations Director that work on the IFCP website.
The project is very much a cotton story, from fiber content to consumer promotion, and the process was filmed and well documented. It will be presented by the IFCP at the 64th ICAC Plenary Meeting in Liverpool next week, and we hope you will be there to see it.
The project will also be presented at the re-naming of the FIT School of Business and Technology to approximately 500 top tier retail and fashion industry executives from all over the world in New York City in October.
And so the project accomplishes several objectives. First, it exposed a group of today's graduates (who are tomorrow's textile and fashion executives and cotton customers) to a real-life experience in developing textile products for consumer markets. The project also taught them how to use cotton content as a marketing tool to help develop a successful product line.
The project taught the team how to develop a domestically focused and funded cotton promotion program by utilizing the resources of the IFCP. The only expense involved was filming the process.
And of course, since the project will be shown to key players and decision makers in the textile, retail, and fashion industries, the focus is once again, on cotton.
While I am very proud to have been the Professor and Project Director for this program, my presence was not what made this possible, albeit, perhaps easier. There are textile and fashion schools in many countries, with extraordinarily talented students, and Professors eager to embark on real-time projects with them. The specific cotton promotion help can be furnished in part by the IFCP and its Members.
It should also be noted that within five days of a private preview of the project, a major U.S. based retailer showed interest in commercializing the program, which is still in discussion.
We consider this program to be a major step forward in our efforts to prove that cotton promotion can be attainable and affordable, and that cotton promotion can cause sales of products that would not have occurred otherwise.
Cotton Sponsor
As mentioned earlier, programs like the IFCP take awhile to catch on, and sustainability is always a concern. In order to remedy this, the IFCP has begun a sponsorship program for organizations, companies, and countries that benefit from the cotton value chain. CottonSponsor, as it is called, is a program that enables these groups to show their support for cotton promotion, in order to secure a healthy future for the cotton sector.
A sponsorship costs $2,500.00 USD, and has a three (3) year duration. As a sponsor, a company's name will be highlighted in materials used at the workshops, will be recognized at the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) annual Plenary Meetings, will be featured on the IFCP Web site, and will have the opportunity to host and help develop future events with the IFCP. But most of all, sponsors will be doing their part to foster a healthy cotton economy globally.
Conclusion
Building demand for cotton is a priority for organizations involved in the world's cotton industry. The challenge posed by synthetic fibers necessitates strong efforts to enhance demand for cotton products through effective consumer promotion.
While the progress to date is impressive, in a lot of ways our work is just beginning. Cotton consumption continues to be challenged by alternative fibers in every market around the world. In spite of an increase in cotton off take in recent years, cotton continues to lose market share. An optimistic future for the full range of participants in the cotton sector — from producer, to trader, to manufacturer, to retailer — can only come if the consumer is convinced of cotton's advantages and acts upon that conviction by purchasing our products.
The IFCP is a catalyst and a coordinator for efforts to enhance demand within the member countries. I urge others to join us, to the IFCP, in enhancing visibility and demand for cotton.
We are very pleased and thankful that the Gdynia Cotton Association, which is a founding member of the IFCP, has frequently demonstrated their utmost dedication to the valuable work performed by the IFCP.
We also would like to thank you for your time and attention, and for recognizing the importance of cotton promotion. We hope to see all of you at the 64th ICAC Plenary Meeting next month in Liverpool.
More: View article as printed in the January 2006 issue of Cotton Bangladesh