From Field to Shelf

The Textile Exchange just celebrated its 20th anniversary -- and did so at an exhilarating conference and trade expo in Colorado Springs....

We live in an age of uncertainty. You know the story: pandemic, supply chain disruption, a war, tensions over Taiwan, and accelerating...

Say I work for a brand, and I'm looking for some shortcut to boost market share. What factors help me to sell my products? It's a...

So many people have worked tirelessly to establish environmental goals and objectives for our industry. Indeed, when it comes to...

The fashion industry is multifaceted: manufacturing, sourcing, design, merchandising, and consumerism, to name just a few examples....

So, what do you do when business decisions made more than 30 years ago come back to haunt you? Well, you either acknowledge there's a...

The year 2020 may go down in history as an inflection point, a time of significant change when so much went so wrong. But from out of...

(Co-Authored with April Kappler, consultant to the cotton and textile supply chain.) Thomas Hobbes, the 17th Century English philosopher,...

We live in such difficult times. It's like the world has been turned upside down. What worked before is now failing. Darkness has...

In the famous 1976 movie "Network," a distraught fictional American television news presenter, Howard Beale, had a breakdown on live TV....

Two recent articles left me wondering about where our world, let alone our industry, will end up once the Covid-19 pandemic eases. The...

Having worked in the cotton business for many years, one of the things I’ve noticed about various clothing brands when pressed about...

Years may change, but some things stay the same. For sure, many of the problems we faced as an industry last year still plague us at the...

In case you hadn't noticed, our industry is changing. For many companies, extended supply chains are out; sustainability is in. Cheap is...

It's an old story. I've heard it from proponents of Made-in-USA production. How can our industry be truly sustainable if it maintains...

In a world of trade wars, disrupted supply chains, and rising raw material costs, can the apparel industry afford sustainability? For...

Environmental groups need to be careful about what they wish for: push too hard, and they’ll get what they want, only with unintended...

First, there was Brexit. Then there was Trump. Now we have talk of undoing trade agreements and potential trade wars. On top of this...

Cotton isn't in the fabric of our lives anymore. Polyester holds that distinction today. Why is that? Price is a major factor; globally,...

[Editor's note: I wrote this back in 2014, but we're still faced with the same muddled message about cotton today.] As you read this...