Who threw the stone?
BUSINESS VIEWPOINT JUSTIN KORNBERG
Justin Kornberg is assistant managing director of Lister and Company, one of the few verti- cally and horizontally integrated textile con- cerns in the world.
'If a fool throws a stone into the water, ten wise men can't get it out again' (folk proverb). The textile industry has never been a tranquil pond. There have been constant additions of fresh water but in parts the water has become stale and stagnant. As a result, it has attracted the same type of life that stagnant water attracts, that which lives off dead or dying organisms, the merchant adventurer as op- posed to the merchant venturer.
Man-made fibres have been well known throughout the textile industry from the ap- pearance of viscose rayon approximately seventy years ago. Nylon appeared just after the Second World War and the Midland knit- ting industry received the initial impulse that contributed to making Leicester and Not- tingham the thriving centres that they are today. Fifteen years ago, polyester and acrylic staple fibres made their appearance, giving Yorkshire its push into the twentieth century, and giving the Midlands an additional accel- eration to their already considerable momen- tum. But poor old Lancashire! Except for the firms that attempted to work at the blend- ing of man-made fibres on the cotton system, who can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the throwsters of Macclesfield, nothing could move it. Not even government payments for the destruction of old machines.
The fibre producers jointly attempted a rationalisation, which failed, following which there was an unseemly rush for rusting machinery and decaying buildings. The end re- sult of this is that the word 'rationalisation,' based as it is on reason, which started so bravely to cure the woes of Lancashire, now means the closing of mills, the termination
of employment and the selling-off of assets.
The main problems of any industry are profit- ability, management, capital and labour. In addition, the textile industry has other impon- derables, the greatest of which is fashion. The previous imponderable of raw material price has been evened out by the advent of the more stable man-made fibres, which have so con- trolled natural raw material prices that wool, for example, has had something of a revival as an inexpensive 'wonder fibre.' The Woollen and Worsted 'Little Neddy' is spending a for- tune on a market survey. It will be a futility, because fashion, whether for men or for women, cannot be marketed like milk or eggs. The essence of marketing milk or eggs is to make them glamorous. Fashion of itself is glamorous and is subject perpetually to the feminine whims, which can be dictated from any unexpected source.
Two cloths or knitted garments can cost exactly the same to produce; one can get a good price, and the other can get no price at all. The difference is style. design and colour- i.e. fashion; and on this side of the Iron Cur- tain, that is what counts.
The story of the textured polyesters can be told as an illustration of the vagaries of fashion. It is a technique which was evolved here and shows that we have not lost our technical cunning. The best known of the tex- tured polyesters is 'Crimplene.' Crimplene and its promotion was going for at least five years, and had several costly failures before it 'caught fire.' Strangely, it did not 'catch fire' via Paris, Rome or New York. but via the good old multiple store familiar to every High Street. Today Crimplene is the British Textile success story of the decade.
In this country the industry is in an in- vidious situation. Sources of supply—the fibre- makers—are limited; and so are outlets large enough to consume an economic production;
which has not made for a strong industry, and has not attracted the best management. Just as yesterday's engine driver is today's airline pilot, yesterday's textile engineer is today's fibre scientist or chemical engineer. The re- wards should be commensurate with the respon- sibility and risk. For the most part in textiles the risk and responsibility have been there, without the reward. Consequently, many tex- tile companies have jogged along like lepers, losing one part and then another but managing to remain alive. I fervently believe that those days are now past. Whether we join EEC or NAFTA our industry is now, although weak, in a far healthier condition to face the future. However, one should have no doubt that it is not due to the large amalgamations that this greater efficiency has come about. Putting a lot of sick little companies together makes a sick big company. It is due to the entre- preneur, whether it a family business or a public company that has seen the growth areas and the fashion demand, which has equipped itself with the latest equipment to face that demand and is manoeuvrable enough to switch their production to meet a quick change of fashion even if it means the scrapping of machinery not five years old.
Fibre manufacturers seek only the offtake of their fibre, for their price is fixed. They encourage the laying down of more plant to consume more fibre. At the outlet end, the buyer is very happy to see the increased pro- duction, for then he can get reduced prices, which, if he is an enlightened trader, he can pass on to the public. Spare a thought for the textile manufacturer with his fixed buying price but variable selling price, centralised buying but peripheral distribution.
The textile industry has a very good repu- tation as \an exports r, and has the widest pos- sible foreigp connettibti, but exports have not been profitable. Some . of the more cynical wait every year to see which textile firms get the Queen's Award for Export and then sell their shares. They nave, sadly, been almost invariably right. For in the market places of the world, the conventional product has no chance for profitabEity. It is only the special- ity and the novelty that can pay its way. Therefore, in exports we must accentuate the positive, and encourage novelty and speciality, i.e. Scottish tweeds, Border cashmere. Export- ing may be `fun, but foreign governments with their tariffs do not see it that way. As long as our Treasury interprets GATT accord- ing to its spirit and not its letter, while every other nation nterrfrets it by the letter, and defies the spirit. we shall be at a disadvan- tage in a trade where pennies can make all the difference.
This may all appear lugubrious .and general, but the textile industry is as old and as vast as all human experience, and as new and ex- citing as the molecules of the latest man-made fibre with all its potentialities, for fashion and marketing uses, with its ensuing benefits to man- kind, whether they be for profit or for pleasure, `Time and chance comes to them all.'
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