The Impact of Covid-19 on the Future of Innovation in the Textile & Apparel Sector

This transcription has been AI generated and therefore may have some inaccuracies.

The Impact of Covid-19 on the Future of Innovation in the Textile & Apparel Sector

This webinar explores the impact of the pandemic on innovation in technology, materials and business models, and share their views on what the next wave of innovation will be.

Good morning and perhaps good evening to those of you who are joining from asia uh our today's webinar is focused
on our wtin's own analysis on how forward 19 has impacted the innovation
index island apparel sector uh our presenter today mark jarvis a
managing director of wtin will take you through uh the slide tag
and will explain how the pandemic has impacted the sector what impact it's had on the
supply chain and the innovation in material and new business side so uh just a bit of housekeeping before
we start uh i mean it's a standard now that we all use zoom almost every day but within the webinar
there is an option to ask questions so if you see on top of your zoom panel you'll be able to see
a q a section so anytime during the presentation if you have any question please feel
free to drop it into that section and we'll pick up those questions at the end of the webinar
uh and feel free to drop these questions because it's not going to disturb anyone these questions are going to come to us
as panelists and others will not get disturbed so yeah i think we can start over to you mark
thank you thank you and good afternoon to you all uh you are
indeed very welcome to this uh webinar um
we're running this webinar in two parts uh firstly i'm going to share with you
some of the insights that we've learned at wtan over the last
12 months or so all of the insights come from our own
content on wtn.com and so after i've made this short presentation
and shared some of these insights with you uh is then going to take you on a quick tour
of wturn.com uh with a particular focus on these insights and just to give you a
look around if you're not familiar with our product um
is in charge of the powerpoint today so if you wouldn't mind if you could move me on to my first slide
i make no apologies for sharing this first slide um it's a bit depressing but
we do need context for it to enable us to look forward
so whilst you're reading this extract from uh it was mckinsey's state of
fashion report uh that was only published a couple of months ago that i felt that it kind of
encompassed very neatly what we've all been experiencing and i think it serves as a good reminder for
what we've been through because the last 12 months or 18 months or so have been um
quite extraordinary uh if we go back to january last year china went into lockdown february
we started all of us to experience huge disruption to supply chains by march
of last year the stock markets had crashed um april in the united states and in
europe we were ourselves moving into lockdowns uh by the summer it was very clear that
consumer design demand for textiles had reduced significantly in the apparel market
although of course because we were spending more time at home it increased in the home textile market but nowhere near enough to compensate
for that hit over the over the winter we've just been through we've all experienced
more lockdowns we're seeing retail stores closing we're seeing the rise of
e-commerce as well of course and now we're all hearing and are concerned
about the indian variant of the virus and the impact that it's having in particular in south
asia but the potential impact it's going to have as it spreads around the world and so the uncertainty
of the last 12 months continues next slide please
thank you so um what has been the impact and these
some of these figures i know they'll be familiar to to most of you but i wanted to share them because again
i think it's important for context so according to the imf the global
economy shrank last year by 4.4
albeit that some parts enjoyed growth in particular china
2.3 percent growth now to the rest of the world perhaps they
look upon china i think cost 2.3 gosh what would we give now for having had that sort of experience
during the pandemic but of course china was a country that's in recent years has been enjoying
seven to ten percent annual growth and even higher if you go back a little further
so even china with that growth has experienced the same level of shock on
its economy as the rest of us um probably developing new entrepreneurial skills as
a as a result because when you're growing at 70 7 to 10 a year then your concern is about
managing that growth rather than using your entrepreneurial skills to deliver the growth
so i think probably a positive experience in some ways for china but for ourselves here in
europe and for those of you in the united states and other parts of the world we really did experience some
considerable uh shrinkage in our economy again a once-in-a-lifetime event perhaps
but we've never seen recessions on the scale that we experienced last year
so if we start to look forward however to 2021 the
imf is forecasting that the global economy will increase
by 5.2 percent year on year in itself that is a remarkable
v-shaped recovery from where we were but that's the global economy what about
our textile industry if you could move me on to the next slide please
so are we going to enjoy the same v-shaped economy that the iamf
is predicting for the world this year and i think the simple answer is no
um the analogy or the imagery perhaps that i like to use for the recovery of
the textile industry is that it will cover it will recover somewhat in the shape of the nike tick
logo so we had the rapid decline in 2020 perhaps a little bit more in
2021 and then a slow recovery back it up so think of
think of the nike tick perhaps when you think of the recovery of the textile
economy yes we experienced significant
wipeout last year revenues were down in 2020 by some 20
according to research conducted by the itmf
and we see the manufacturer's response continuing in 2020 as they adjust to
what is now their new normal and that means cost saving through reduced head count
and delayed investment in new capital equipment so
2021 will not see the end of the epinem economic impact of the pandemic
and some 60 percent of manufacturers will still possibly be losers as their
revenues continue to decline further
but we are as i say probably in a two to three year recovery back to pre-covered financials so no
quick bounce back so where are we heading and when we return
to those levels well you can see on the right hand side of the slide that for europe
and for north america very similar time frames for recovering back to pre-coded levels for our
industry and that is to the end towards the end of next year or the beginning of 2023 so still
some way off but if you are operating from the asia
pacific region then this year we are expecting and particularly in
places like china to see revenues five to ten percent higher than 2019
levels so there will be winners
and there will be if you could move the slide on for me please
there will be some strong dynamics that deliver
change and positive change so i read somewhere that uh the best
performing companies according to their share price exhibit two key characteristics
one is a strong focus in asia pacific some 30 plus of revenues
is defined as a strong presence in asia pacific but also a compelling digital
proposition and we've picked out for you here some examples firstly of
how digitalization will impact the industrialization of manufacturing and also some ideas for
how it's impacting on consumers as well so digital fabric
sourcing we believe will become increasingly popular so designers can source fabrics from
various suppliers through online platforms like materials exchange
and those manufacturers can receive feedback on their samples quickly
and make changes efficiently um will it become the go-to place for
sourcing no no we will not it will not replace live events it will not replace meetings
but like a lot of the digital tools that we've used during the last 12
months it will become now a part of the way that we operate
just also looking at uh technology 3d technology from the likes of optitex
and clo and 3d look will pick up on some of these
examples by the way when she takes you on a tour of wton.com but you know these
softwares um mimic fabrics and allow designers to work
in a space while testing color the fibers the flow even the drape of
the fabric is being simulated by animated avatars
and this obviously can cut back enormously on lead times for the product developers but what's more
lots of startups are now entering this space and they're doing quite well for example 3d look i
mentioned you know it's helping companies to size uniforms for their employees through an
app on the mobile phone that measures the individuals
and finally and something i'd like to focus on in a little bit more detail is the trend
for reassuring or near shoring so the
collapse of supply chains a year ago has prompted companies obviously to rethink
their supply chains or at least to find new ways of de-risking their supply chains
and one of those solutions is to nearshore or re-shore the manufacturing
back from the asia pacific region i saw a recent uh survey by pwc
a few thousand chief executives it was the major piece of work and they found that something like three
quarters of them believe that the pandemic has accelerated an enduring
shift from human labor to automation automation being a key part of any
reassuring initiative so we've got examples quite a few but i just picked out a
couple here a couple of non-wovens companies melt blow who are in france and gnosis
who are here in the uk two very new companies only set up last year as a reaction
to the pandemic entrepreneurial startups who are now manufacturing and
distributing non-woven face masks in their respective conference countries
but i would say perhaps even more interestingly is a company in the united states called
evolution louis and they've established a knitting manufacturing hub i mean this
company is is is is not just concerned with shifting the manufacturing back
to the us but it's also using it as a chance to do things more efficiently and
intelligently by taking advantage of new technology from the likes of companies manufacturers of
machines like stock so we're going to see restore reassuring increase
and that will increase interest in concepts such as industry 4.0
digital manufacturing as a result will proliferate driven by a desire to build resiliency
in the event of a potentially worse global pandemic or indeed an economic
catastrophe so using that to build resiliency into supply chains
but also leveraging the use of these new technologies and digitalization
for social and environmental sustainability
so moving on to um what we're seeing with consumer digitalization um i'll just touch on
this one briefly um you know the pandemic is forcing
smaller retailers and designers to adopt o2o that's offline to online or social
e-commerce and an example of that has been with amer some american uh fashion
designers and amazon and so for quite some time amazon's been courting
these designers and they've they've not wanted to get involved with amazon but however during the pandemic
several of these designers finally decided to partner with them and in september amazon launched a
luxury store experience on its website exclusively for uh prime members um so
i think we're starting to see here whether it's through the likes of amazon
or calculate we're starting to see the beginning of um an increased
move to e-commerce facilitated by some of these platforms and as
manufacturers this is going to mean this is going to create the demand for increasing
agility in the manufacturing of their products to take advantage of these changing consumer
habits next slide please thank
you lovely thank you um so um next big uh trend that we've seen
emerging uh in the last 12 months uh fabric functionalization so we're seeing
a shift and and i think a shift that is going to be with us for good now in consumer attitudes and their
preferences as they are starting to view technology as something
vital to managing their healthcare i mean we've all experienced this with you know how our watches
now monitor various aspects of our physiology um and so wearable technologies are
being seen as a means of consumers taking a more active role in controlling their own well-being
and as empower as well as empowering consumers with actionable information to be able to do so
so these devices have the potential to become products that are truly value-created and augment
people's lives for example um one example i was hearing about was facilitating a shift in healthcare
away from the culture of treatment and towards one of prevention and early intervention through
predictive analytics and ai systems now so
textiles part in this is is clearly in the sensing of certain aspects of
physiology and allowing the collection and analysis and transmission of health
data to provide access for rapid diagnostic information reporting
and medical assessments i mean this type of technology could also play a
significant role in the early detection of viruses and thereby therefore allowing
healthcare practitioners to plan appropriate and targeted interventions early
but the the main area of innovation driven directly by the pandemic among textile producers
has been the array of new products which possess antiviral and antimicrobial
properties one example we've we've heard a lot about is the iq viral block um you know and
as covaid and its variants stay with us beyond the pandemic i think demand for these types of products will
persist and it will lead to further innovation in this area
next slide please cheeky
thank you um sustainability it's a subject that's
been with us now for 15 20 years but never more so than today and
sustainability is one um trend if you if i can call it a trend
that is driving innovation and as such it will lead to
manufacturers adopting more sustainable production
practices and crucially hear more rapidly this has been a slow trend over recent
years but we're seeing the pandemic accelerate some of this change and included in that
is far greater consideration to a product's disposal or its repair or
collection at the end of its life so trends in supply chain
transparency and the circular economy are being driven by the consumer
new circular or recycling technologies will offer new and innovative
business models and you can see some examples there with the automated textile sorting plant
operating in sweden uh the blockchain the block text initiative in australia
and also some of the initiatives that are being taken by some of the bigger brands and more of that in a moment
and as well as these initiatives garments are likely to change multifunctional
garments will emerge as consumers aim to reduce consumption
levels and perhaps if that is a trend that's emerging as manufacturers we should think about
value creation and not volume
next slide please
lovely thank you second slide on how sustainability
is driving innovation uh firstly in the in the raw materials
themselves um we are starting to see the beginning of an
intensifying of competition among different textile fiber types
and we believe it's likely to spark further developments in what we call
alternative fibres now these already include fibers derived
from such wide sources and diverse sources as stinging nettles waste
coffee grounds uh pineapple leaves and banana stems and you know there are
there are numerous others that you can find information about uh
that are in development on uh you can find information about them on what.com
um and the key to the success of these will be either the extent to which they can be
produced at scale or create new value with new features
like for example energy storage or conductivity and you can see with the
chalmers university example at the top of the page
that they have produced a conductive cellulosic threat with enormous
possibilities there's an article on this on wtm.com and and there are many other examples
here on the page of other potential developments
um of course all of this is in the context of the um
dominance of man-made fibers um but maybe just maybe these natural
fibers um are at the beginning of perhaps a fight back uh against the dominance of polyester
etcetera in the market we're also seeing the emergence of new
business models and one in particular we wanted to highlight is subscription services so many
subscriptions services are revolutionizing the entertainment
industry and likes netflix food and drink industry beauty
industries they're all uh examples of subscription services
that may further integrate into the textile industry and i've got a couple examples
um one of them is in the bottom right hand corner that is a sportswear shoe
obviously you can see that it's called cyclone and it's from a sportswear brand called
on and they are championing this direction and have announced a
monthly subscription model for this particular shoe and they are marketing it i really like
this as the shoe you will never own now another example is
they have um the the outdoor web the outdoor brand um they have set up collection points
at activity centers to explain climbing walls and things um and an
enabling communities to conveniently engage with the brand and returning products like their ropes
uh for for recycling so there are good examples out there of new business
models that have emerged uh in in in the last year or so
tinky next slide please
so i am uh at the end of my part of uh the presentation um
i'll be back for questions after we've heard from who's going to give you a
quick insight into our our main product w10.com and also a very
quick demonstration of it so thank you over to you thank you mark so uh just a quick
uh nation as a wrapper before we move on to our website and see the knowledge and action and how
we've derived this information so a little background about us so wtn.com is basically an
information provider purely focused on uh sharing the knowledge around
innovation in technology materials and business processes and strategies so anything that you see
on our platform would have an element of innovation linked to it
uh we have a very strong technology platform base which
wherein we use artificial intelligence and machine learning to derive insights into what the market
data is showing is and that's where our own analysts take action and pick up on topics that are
relevant in the industry and write about those things so you can see our structure we've got
uh eight analysts in-house some 20 researchers and we also work with an extended team of specialists within the
industry and on an average we are publishing around 500 articles each month
so from here on i'll just switch my screen and take you to the platform show you quickly how it works and then
we'll move on to the qna session
um mark just not if you can see the screen
okay perfect okay so it's working fine great so this is the platform wtn.com as we
talked about and uh there were some brilliant examples
that mark mentioned during his part of the presentation and i would say those examples were
specifically showcasing insight into where the industry trends are going
uh where we see innovation coming up more in the near future because those
have all been in those sectors of the industry have all been impacted by kobe so what i'm just gonna do is i'll do
some quick searches to show you how it works and then deep dive into a couple of things that might
be relevant for uh some of the participants today so uh just picking up on one example mark
mentioned around uh optitex and 3d club so that's around
3d simulation so if you go into our platform as the registered user you can
have access to an advanced search function we move into advanced search we narrow
down the search by w10 content and very quickly you can see we've written so many articles
in the last 12 months itself on 3d simulation where in you can see source software ptc
flex plm and we've also talked about some of the business models that have emerged
for example here how fashion e-commerce is being driven by 3d softwares uh just to show
you the depth of the article so this is a detailed inside piece
where our analysts have spoken to the different businesses and seen the impact of the 3d simulation
technology on how it's impacting the e-commerce platform now say for example you read this
article and you feel oh this is very interesting and i want to find out
more about 3d simulation 3d designing software what could you do
we've got our own proprietary machine learning algorithm which we call as
discovery and as the word suggests it helps you discover more content that is relevant for you it
helps you build your knowledge discover more on particular topics that
might be of interest you so if you're interested in 3d simulation you click on
and you'll see a pop-up comes up which gives more insight into
what this topic is all about so what is this topic all about you can see we are talking about
sentiment analysis this is an algorithm that reads the sentiment on that particular topic
what does industry feel about 3d stimulation uh are there positive information is
there a negative information and we can clearly see here uh 3d simulation is all approximately a
little higher on 0.6 scale which is a very positive uh sentiment so that that's something
that everybody is talking about and is looking to do more what topics are relevant
so we can see some node analysis here where the central node talks about the core topic so we can see
amazon is doing a lot of 3d simulation uh temple garment another company it's
been used a lot on shopping sites it's relevant in retail sector uh
e-commerce so you can pick up which topic is of interest and say for example
we say fashion is of interest we click on this note and then we can find out more about this
particular topic the other thing you could do is you can also see these smaller notes where you see
articles and these article types would take you to different topics uh where
the software uh technology or the solution that you're looking for has been applied
then it also gives you a list of companies potentially mentioned in the article and relevant to it and as we
know 3d simulation optitex is very relevant if you want to find out more about the company
you click on the company a logo and it takes you to a company fact sheet which
is a very detailed thorough information that you can see about the company their
key professionals what recent mergers and acquisitions have happened so we know
efi recently acquired octotex so that information is here
how has the sentiment about this industry grown over the period and we can quickly
see when the pandemic hit then everybody wanted to move towards 3d simulation and online and the whole
scenario account around the sentiment growing for a particular company and it also shows you what other topics
they've been talked about so majorly fashion brands are talking about optitex uh graphic designers 3d computer
graphics so these are the topics that are relevant within the uh sector and then some of the linked
companies and you might also find other events where they've participated in the past or
would do in future so it's a complete package when you start researching for something
you're not just looking at an article uh mentioning a technology but then you also have the opportunity to deep dive
into a particular topic look at what related articles are there who else is talking about similar
technology and if you're interested in any one of the companies you could always look at the company
fact sheet the other thing uh that mark mentioned another example was
around say the cellulose conductive threads mark mentioned uh now
there are multiple articles we've got around that but i want to show one thing very particular which might be of interest to rmd
professionals is our patents we've got a specific section around patents uh and
as you can see uh we've got more than to 2 million patents there and the
database goes back up to 1960 and it's updated on a daily basis so
what uh say for example we want to search conductive fibers
we do a quick search conductive fibers
and we can see okay so that's the breakdown conductive fibers and within that we can quickly see who
else how many patents have been released so there was something recently in may itself couple of uh new patents
that have been published uh if you want to see who's got the maximum patents in this field you can
see a list of assignees where it's been assigned and to give you an example i'll just
show you one patent how detailed this analysis is this is a
very good tool for anybody involved in research and development because we simplify the information we
give you complete information in terms of the background behind patents where it's
been assigned who is the user and how it links with the parent company so hold all the information
in one place with up if there's any diagrams associated with the patent application all that information will be available
so okay so it's loaded you can see
sorry just give it a couple of seconds it should load
maybe there's an issue let me check this one uh
so this i mean similar to the discovery page you'll notice you'll see a lot of cross linkage here
that the information uh populates if this patent has been referenced in another patent
and all that information will be all available in one go uh i do apologize looks like there is
some issue loading this page at my end but i'll try and come back to it uh later on uh once i've finished the
demo okay now uh so that's one feature but you could see there is a bit of topic
analysis again that where conductive fibers have been included it's all about electrical conductivity tensile strength
of the fiber carbon polymers and then a breakdown of who's been assigned so we can say we can
see tension fibers and tori uh they've been uh putting up patents
specifically in this sector and and we know that they're doing a lot of work in conductive fibers at the moment
and uh that's a full list and then but you do have the option if you know anybody who has an inventor
uh you might want to you know put their name in and see what patents they've got so it's a really good tool
for the uh rnd and especially the ib patents department as well if they have
somebody full time in-house who's monitoring patents they could utilize our platform and it's all our inbuilt technology how
this analysis runs and how the assignee breakdown and all the information is published
and our source for this patents is we get direct access from the patent offices so all
this information is really up to date and it's updated on a regular basis so
uh you you get the latest information okay uh the other feature i would
suggest is uh uh i think i've noticed somebody put in a question around the antiviral uh
topic where uh what's the popularity uh perhaps i would say we could use a
discovery feature in itself uh to see how popular this
topic has been and uh we'll notice that uh there have been a lot of uh i'll
just put high q here because that's the company that's been doing a lot of work around anti-viral properties and
you can see we've mentioned so there's a lot of content around the antiviral property and the
industry is talking about this topic so there's a increasing trend and uptake for this
technology which can be definitely seen from the analysis
the other thing that we regularly do is on a quarterly basis we review the
market and put up our own analysis around what we are seeing in the industry
so say for example uh perhaps let's review this article that's around the post code
growth in performance textiles and this would highlight how the
industry has moved what in uh what's impacted the industry
in the last quarter and what future trends we might see uh in the sector so
this is an in uh this has been written by our own analyst and we can see that the last quarter in 2020
how the sentiment of the industry has grown and you can also compare the sentiment
com to the full textile sector so we can see overall textile sector sentiment has grown slightly
not too much but slightly from compared to where we were in 2020 last quarter and where we were
in 2021 and there's a bit of analysis around what we are seeing uh what the
competitive growth has been and and this is the growth for
the post code um if we say from january onwards if we consider it as a post-covet error
then that's the growth we are suggesting has happened in the performance industry and then we talk about what events or
what has given the sector this growth what has impacted this growth
so uh just as you know there i mean everybody usually follows the ces in us every year
that happens in january uh there was a lot of antiviral properties and
performance driven stuff shown at the event so that's given a boost to the sector uh there's
ispo show where everything around performance is driven so those are the trends and new product launches that have
driven the sentiment of the industry and then you can see there's a lot of information in here as to what brands are pushing
development and how things have impacted the sector in the last quarter so this is the sort of stuff our
analysts do on a regular basis and you can see some of the mentions that might have happened within this article
so those have been pulled here to our discovery platform uh and the this is in line with what we
see in the industry what our view is uh on the growth in the market and this uh we publish it
regularly on a quarterly basis for all the different channels that we have on our website
the i think one last thing perhaps uh i would just want to touch upon here
is uh the platform we've got two i would say content types
here one is wti news which is more like a market inside where if something is
happening in the industry we put our view and a comment piece but our if you want to track the market
trends if you want to look at the technical specifications of what development is
happening in different high growth sectors within the textile industry
and you want to follow the product development the patents and the innovation that are happening in
different in these sectors then the intelligence is our membership portfolio which would be of
interest to you uh yeah perhaps we can open it up for
some questions now mark unless you would like to add something here
uh do you want to quickly try that other tap see if it's loaded up now
no still okay you've obviously got a bit of a bandwidth uh thing going on
today never mind okay so um
someone sorry just share i'll share a couple of links afterwards when we send
the recording out so uh everyone can good idea good idea if uh for those of you who
like to read the detail of patents then you will already be looking forward to that email
and those examples uh we've another two point something million of them
on the website so there's plenty to go at um yeah we've got a question uh just
regarding the um the sorting plant and the recycling plant in sweden
uh regarding how um how they distinguish between things like buttons
and zippers and how those are separated out i i have to say off the top of my head i don't have the answer to that
i remember the article and what stood out for me in the article was that it can sort uh
bales of uh textile garments some i think i think it's like 10 times
faster than a person can sort them and it can sort them into
14 different fiber types as well so they've certainly got the angle of separating out the cotton from the
polyester from different types of blends that's that's already part of the solution uh
as regards to buttons and zippers i'm not too sure i don't know if you remember that particular article or not
i can pull it up let's see oh well yeah i tell you what i do know you know about is is um
mono materials is that the terminology that we we're referring to yeah yeah especially i think uh the
industry is saying mono materials is the way to go forward if you really want to embark upon the whole recycling and
the circularity of it because it's then easier for the sorting division
to it's just basically put the product in and because it's just one material it's just been made from
a single fiber type there are no different elements to it uh and it's easier to recycle so that's
the uh plan that's the idea behind it and some of the brands are actually testing it now
because uh the product developers feel it's an easier way to achieve their
sustainability initiatives if they focus on mono materials and that it's been a focus for last
couple of quarters we are noticing more and more information coming up on these product developments
so i've just pulled up the article uh we were talking about uh the swedish innovation plan for
textiles sorting and so let's see i mean i'll share the article
link with the with the team afterwards so they can perhaps read it in detail
uh but to go um the whole whole article to find out how
yeah we've also got a question uh with regards to
our retailers and how they will respond to some of these new
developments in in retail and yes of course they've got a an
enormously strong attachment to their existing business models but
um they you know we're already seeing the the weaker retailers fail
um we're seeing that happening quite regularly so there is a little bit of a an
adjustment going on with regards to uh those retailers that were already
perhaps a little weak uh prior to the pandemic
um and of course some of those organizations have have also sought to pivot quite quickly
to leverage more from uh e-commerce there will be as we emerge from
lockdowns and restrictions in various countries there will be i'm sure a resurgence
in high street retail i've no doubt about that but the long-term trend does suggest a bit like a lot of things
in our lives these days that it's going to be a bit of it's going to be much more of a hybrid
existence so in the same way as a lot of us are now working uh high in in a hybrid manner from home
and from the office uh high streets will operate those who haven't already will operate
a lot more online and indeed vice versa you only have to look at amazon now beginning to open up some
retail environments they recently opened up a supermarket over here in the uk so um it'll continue to be a very
dynamic sector but ultimately it's going to be driven by the consumer and we have a long-held view
that the consumer holds all the cards here and that the retailers are the ones who are likely to
be squeezed um and in fact actually manufacturers um through the use of the sort of
platforms i was describing earlier have a tremendous opportunity to reach out direct to
the consumer and actually build increased value in their businesses
sure i mean if i can add just an example here what you said mark uh we've seen this
happening in uk one of uh a popular e-commerce platform
boho actually bought the failing groups from arcadia group some of the brands like burton and
dorothy perkins and they bought the whole deb and their e-commerce platform so uh those who
are not performing or switching towards the e-commerce model in high street fashion are actually
seeing a decline and perhaps somebody more prominent in the e-commerce market might come and buy
those weak brands in near future yeah it's a very good example isn't it you know
an incredibly strong online brand now reaching out into high street retail
so yeah everything's being shaken closing the shops and everything is
going online for these uh brands that they've purchased from arcadia group or debit right
yeah yeah do we have any more questions at the
moment uh i don't think we do give it a few seconds just to see if
anyone has something on their mind they'd like to share
doesn't even have to be a question if there's a comment by all means um share it with us see something on our
platform ask us yeah
okay well the q a seems to have gone silent and we are already running up to the
uh our end point of of this webinar so perhaps then if there are no more
questions um i'd like to thank for hosting this webinar with me
and i'd like to thank you all very much oh hang about we've just had something in chat yeah
that's coming in chat let's have a look at this one there are jinky there's one for you to
do live sustainable textiles in the product search let's have a look
so yeah if i use the term sustainable textiles and do a quick search in last 12 months we've got 734 articles
just by wtin uh i must add when i'm saying just by wtin we uh we also pull third party article
in our platform so if i remove the content source information you can see the number jumps to 2448
just for last 12 months uh but those third-party articles can be generic news or any information where
sustainable textiles is mentioned the idea behind it is to give you wider
content perspective but if you want to deep dive into any technology or any you know
specifics then i would recommend always search with content sources
you will find more detailed information within this section yeah but your sustainability is a key
factor we focus on because a lot of i would say all the sustainable initiatives that are coming
out are driven by innovation in either the material side of it or technology
and that's what we focus on so we do write a lot about sustainable initiatives and new products and
business models emerging out of sustainability yeah that was an excellent question and
a good answer thank you i think it's important to recognize that whilst we do present some of the information if you
like in vertical silos like the performance textiles market then we also
have what we call themes like sustainability running across everything that we do as
well and another reason why we aggregate third-party content from websites that
are sharing textile news freely is that we can analyze it so that some
of the discovery uh features that you saw demonstrated earlier by they are driven not just by wti and
content but by third party content so when we're looking at things like the sentiment around particular topics then that is a
measure not just of what we're writing but what's being reported on collectively across about 500
different third-party sources from other trade websites through to national
newspapers in countries where textile manufacturing is a large industry so it's it's it's if
you like a complete picture through wtin as to what's been reported
on our industry okay i think unless there's been any
last minute um no i don't think that has so um i think we're at the point now of
saying thank you to you attendees as well thank you very much uh it's been our pleasure to be with you
today and to share some insights that we've learned over the last 12 months
and um hopefully we'll be meeting again very soon uh at our
next uh at our next webinar so uh thank you all very much indeed and uh
goodbye yeah just one thing to add i'm just seeing some questions popping up
around the point in the recording yeah just give us a couple of hours and we'll be sharing the
recording with you also you'll have this information handy
thank you thanks everyone goodbye