CURTAIN-RAISER ShanghaiTex 2017
ShanghaiTex is the leading fair of the industry and aims to assist industrial enterprises to capture the enormous business opportunities brought by industry transformation. With the‘ Made in China 2025’ initiative to comprehensively upgrade Chinese industry and promotion of Industry 4.0 philosophy from Germany, we see that many textile machinery makers today are keeping up with the pace to the realisation of automation, greener and smarter production. By attending a gathering of tens of thousands of textile practitioners, both exhibitors and visitors can obtain the latest industry information, network with each other and exchange knowledge at the show.
This time ShanghaiTex will focus on‘ Textiles for Smarter Future’. How significant is this in the present context? How much do you think the global textiles industry is ready for a smarter future? When most people think textiles, they think fashion but not technology. Smart textiles are materials and structures that sense and react to environmental conditions or stimuli, such as those from mechanical, thermal, chemical, electrical, magnetic or other sources. Textile science today stands on a novel, unexplored and a fantasy-filled horizon. These myriad sciences are blended with one another to produce fashionable textiles which make our lives comfortable and luxurious. Smart textiles, furthermore, are not just restricted to fashion and apparel, but extend to many other applications like automobiles, robotics, medicine and surgery, etc.
At ShanghaiTex 2017, a‘ Smart Factory & C2M Experience Zone’ will be set up to demonstrate the latest technologies of 3D body scanning, mass
Today, ShanghaiTex focuses more on the world’ s latest automation trend, high-growth application sectors and cross-border technology. customisation and e-platforms. A 3D fitting bus will be showcased at the zone. We welcome all visitors to come to the zone at Hall E1 to experience this smart and innovative technology under the customisation trend. So from our point of view, the textiles industry is already applying smart production, and will embrace a smarter future towards digitalisation and sustainability.
ShanghaiTex 2017 will also be showcasing crossboundary integration. Could you please elaborate on this? As an all-round exhibition featured throughout the upstream and downstream textiles industry chain, ShanghaiTex always strives to lead the textiles industry in exploring the world’ s most advanced textile technology applications and latest development on high-growth segments.
In terms of technology, ShanghaiTex will showcase some integration solutions. Some products that used to contain different manufacturing processes can now be completed in a one-stop production. Knitted shoe upper technology replacing traditional shoe production and smart garments produced by conductive yarns are the remarkable examples of the cross-boundary application trend today. We are really proud that many machinery leaders are playing an important role to bring more innovative products and drive the industry growth. In terms of trade show, ShanghaiTex will invite not only manufacturers and traders, but also some apparel brands( such as Li- Ning, Decathlon, New Balance, C & A, H & M etc.) and OEMs to exchange opinions and share information. We will also conduct business matching sessions for them during the show. One of our partners, Marks & Spencer, will hold a buyer’ s forum onsite, to introduce the latest development of their development strategy, and discuss the latest green solutions with other top-notch industry players.
ShanghaiTex has been focusing a lot on sports textile technologies in the past few shows. How much do you see this segment dominating the textiles-apparel industry in the near future? Sports textiles is a high growth section in the industry and has great market potential. This year our concurrent event‘ Sports Arena’ at Hall W1 will look into three hot topics: sports bra, wearable technology and shoe technology. We welcome professional buyers, exhibitors, brands, designers and all textile enthusiasts to explore the new look of textile and join us to expand their network and business opportunities!
The Sports Bra-ology Forum + Focus Group Discussion: Many lingerie brands have launched their sports bra line under the‘ Sporty Athleisure’
72 | FIBRE2FASHION NOVEMBER 2017