Few people have the multi-continent, multi-year perspective on and involvement with the global textile marketplace as Michael Jänecke. Here is an incisive summary of a recent question-and-answer discussion between our editors and the global brand manager for Techtextil.

Michael Jänecke is worldwide brand manager
of Techtextil and Avantex, the International Forum and Symposium for Innovative Apparel Textiles. He joined Messe Frankfurt in 1992
as director of the Techtextil Frankfurt fair
and in 1997, became director of Techtextil worldwide. Michael graduated in business management and has held positions in a technical textile and apparel textile manufacturing company. Since 2000, he
has contributed to several European-funded projects related to technical textiles.

Q.  Michael, you have lead the growth and expansion of Messe Frankfurt’s technical textile trade shows on a worldwide basis
for 16 years now.  In that time, how has
the industry changed?

In a word, growth. One of the major changes
is that the number of technical textile producing and converting companies is continuously growing. When you put together all the information we have, you’ll see we are talking about a growing worldwide market led by the growth in population and the development of and demand for new materials and applications made possible by innovations. 

Certainly technical textiles growth is stronger in some areas than others, but overall it’s a very positive development.

Q. In your position, you have had to track how the markets are changing. What can you tell us from a geographic point of view?

The globalization of the market can be seen just from our experience at Messe Frankfurt. Sixteen years ago, we had only one Techtextil show in Frankfurt. Today we have six. In addition to Europe, we have Moscow, Shanghai, Mumbai, Atlanta and Las Vegas. The location of these shows is a useful compass for understanding the industry.

The United States is the world’s largest market for technical textiles. It is a market for both commodity products and specialty technical textiles. And it’s geographically diverse. We found that buyers in the west may not travel east to Atlanta. That’s why we have added a West Coast show, which will be held every other year starting with Las Vegas in 2009.

China, because of its size and with the potential for these products, is a necessity. You have to be there. 

In technical textiles, India is a completely new market – a market to be explored and developed, and it will involve a number of risks. For anyone interested in going into the Asian region, India is a strategic market. If you are going there at this very early stage, you have a chance to influence that market’s development and to be one of the first benefiting from that.  

The Russian market also bears as big potential, but it requires some more time to develop. A lot of investments are going on so it is certainly a market for the future.

Europe is a very attractive market because here there is a lot of specialty use. It has niche markets where the quantities might be small, but the price is much higher and therefore also the margin. There’s good money to be made in Europe.

Q.  From your perspective as an industry observer, what categories of technical textiles have the most exciting potential?

There are so many. When you consider that the private passenger car today has somewhere around 55 pounds (25 kg.) of technical textiles including composites, we are talking about growing consumption with big, big quantities in the future. Along with the opportunities that arise from demand come the challenges of recycling. For example, the European Commission’s End-of-Life Vehicles (ELV) regulations set targets on the percent of recyclability by 2015. Technical textiles can play a key role here.

Another related area is the continuing demand for new materials for new applications not only in the automotive, but many other industries. The new Airbus A380 couldn’t be built without technical textiles. Approximately one fourth of the structure is composites. These composites reduce the total weight by 15 tons, contributing to lower fuel use and lower noise.

Advances in safety – child, workplace, sports and military safety – are possible because of different technical textiles materials for personal protection and equipment protection.

Then there is an enormous growth in medical applications. You can see the potential when you consider first, that our society is getting older; second, the increase in healthcare – both clinical care, wellness and fitness applications; and third, a growing interest in hygiene products. Whether it’s making life easier for the people or helping to keep them healthy, the medical-hygiene-wellness applications are significant opportunities for new growth.

As you can see, technical textiles is a vast area with very attractive, growing niche markets, and a lot of new markets we don’t even know of yet. Some of these applications are not even visible – I hope that none of us has the need to see an airbag!

Q. Just looking at the present, what are today’s biggest markets?

Today’s largest markets follow the development of the world population.

The biggest markets by proportion are the building or construction market followed by the transport industry – car production, aircraft, space travel, ships and so on.

In these markets, we are talking mainly about quantities and partly about small profit margins. But these are huge markets.

If you look also into developing countries and their growing infrastructures – new buildings and road construction – as well as agriculture, all this calls for geotextiles.

Then you have the growing number of cars worldwide. Just imagine the new cars that will be coming into the industrializing markets – not only today’s standard, single airbag, but a future where each vehicle has six airbags. Can you imagine how much volume this would mean for the textile producers?

Q. How has competition changed?

Worldwide consumption is growing because of population growth and the appetite for new applications. Overall production is being increased just to meet such requirements. On a global scale, there is an increase in the number of companies producing technical textiles – new companies and existing companies changing their product mix to include technical textiles as well as traditional textiles.

To me it’s still surprising that, for example, the number of German exhibitors in Frankfurt is growing as it has. Normally we would expect the number of exhibitors to be limited by the number of new companies entering the market, and there have not been that many. But the growth we are seeing in Europe is also from companies that are changing their product mix. And it is this growth that has changed the dynamics in the marketplace.

Q. What are these new marketplace dynamics?

When I joined Messe Frankfurt, it was a market that was not really at its beginning, but certainly on its way up. And many companies had new materials, technology, processes they were very keen to present to the public, just to gain awareness and stimulate business.

But with today’s growing number of producers, there is an intense level of competition. When you look around a trade fair, the innovation is not as visible as, let’s say, 10, 15 years back. The cutting edge developments are not exhibited for all to see, feel, touch or photograph. Competition has made the industry much more cautious about showing new products and technologies in development or about to launch. They are concerned that a competitor will appropriate ideas to get in on the action.

Q.  So how do the players in technical textiles market today?

This is something we deal with as trade show operators. Of course, the manufacturers have to say or show something to the audience, whether it is at a trade show or in a magazine report. But today they don’t want to show too much – they have to protect their intellectual property. Instead they have to present themselves as a potential supplier, or as a potential partner for new developments.

Q. Is this affecting how buyers and sellers communicate?

Yes. There is a new language in the technical textiles market.

Q.  What is the new language?

The new language is the language of the customer.

When we are talking about technical textiles, we are no longer only talking textile language. In fashion, you are talking to designers and garment manufacturers, but they are all textile related. But if you are talking about transportation or if you are talking about construction, you are far out of the textile industry. You are talking with architects, civil engineers, developers and manufacturers. That means they have different thinking. They have a different understanding. As a technical textile provider, you have to learn to speak their language.

Q. And what you need for that kind of conversation is a marketplace, right?

Today’s marketplace is a conversation, not only an environment in which to buy and sell. The conversation can be at an exhibition, a trade show or other meeting places. It can be at a symposium. The Internet can help you beforehand to identify potential companies, but the key is to ultimately meet with your customers or prospects face-to-face. 

The challenge is to learn what your customers need. In the apparel market, you have designers providing you the next season’s style. You have plans saying, “Okay, next year all of us need to be dressed in white and blue.” In technical textiles, it’s the other way around. You go to your existing customers or maybe potential customers who supply the ultimate users. You learn that these users have a problem. Then you and your customer work to find a solution together. 

In our business – the trade show business – we provide a venue for these marketing conversations with textile converters or with end-product manufacturers of autos, aircraft, medical products, safety equipment and many other industries as described by the 12 application areas conceived by Messe Frankfurt, together with the industry, in the mid-90s – Agrotech, Buildtech, Clothtech, Geotech, Hometech, Indutech, Medtech, Mobiltech, Oekotech, Packtech, Protech and Sporttech.

Even if you can have just five to ten good meetings a day during the trade-fair day, you are succeeding. You are having conversations with partners; you are uncovering emerging needs; you can selectively reveal intellectual property and proprietary capabilities. Then you should try to make ten appointments and have that level of discussion outside the show. How much would you have to travel to achieve that? 

In a more traditional sense, at a trade show, you also get an overview of what’s going on in the market and you can see, touch and smell products. A textile-related customer always has to touch the material. If you see a new type of material, you grab it, you touch it – it’s in the genes.

Q. So the new technical textiles market is one of innovations being pulled through by the end users and their needs versus the way apparel textiles push fabrics and colors to designers and their brands?

Yes. It’s different thinking. In technical textiles, you are really going more toward talking about customized production. In nonwovens for example, both Company A and Company Z will meet the standards for a baby diaper. But one will have better texture, more comfort that keeps the baby drier or co-developed other benefits for the customer. These benefits come from the solutions – the intellectual property – developed by the nonwovens fabric manufacturer alone or, more and more frequently, in collaboration with the customer.

So you have, especially in technical textiles, no longer only the textile manufacturer bringing new materials and applications into the market, but in many cases, it’s the user or the buyer coming to a manufacturer with his idea or problem, looking for solutions, and even co-developing the new innovation. It’s more and more about strategic partnerships between manufacturers and their customers.