Infrastructure to handle demands of techtextile production slowly improving in India
Paige Mullis discusses the expansion plans of Glen Raven Inc in India, and India as a manufacturing hub with Mary Christine Joy. Glen Raven Inc is one of the leading global providers of high performance fabrics across a wide variety of residential, commercial, and industrial applications. It is renowned for its high performance fabrics for various industries including automotive, petrochemicals, construction, mining, logistics, geosynthetics, filtration and protective fabrics. It serves professionals ranging from the police officers, military personnel, fire fighters, etc. The company's manufacturing facilities are spread across three continents, including North America, Europe, and Asia. It sells products in over 100 countries. Its brands such as Sunbrella and Dickson fabrics are used for residential and commercial awnings, upholstery, outdoor furniture, and boating. Paige Mullis has been serving as the director of concept development for Glen Raven Inc since 2011. It has been almost 3 years and a half years now, and her role has remained creative as well as intellectual in the company. She was promoted to the current position from a junior position in the company gradually during the initial stages of her career. She has over 20 years of experience in the textile industry, and is renowned in the industry circle for her market knowledge.
We are only exploring the technical textile market in India at this time, and bringing our portable Concept Gallery to Mumbai for a few days through our subsidiary Strata Geo systems India Pvt Ltd. The purpose of this is to explore the potential for collaboration and innovation with a combination of many products and processes that we are involved with globally. Let the creative juices flow!
We think it is at a nascent stage, with many application driven opportunities to consider. Producing high performance fabrics is a challenging endeavour, but finding the correct marketing plan, distribution network, inventory management system, and long range vision is even more daunting. Glen Raven has gone through this process multiple times during our 134 year history in a number of different countries, and we are actively engaged in this evaluation for the Indian market.
By their very nature, technical textiles will always be a smaller volume segment of the whole textile industry. However, it is a space that offers many opportunities to market specialised value added products, and capture a significant market share.
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