BELFAST MUST STUDY THE WORLD’S STYLES Conservative Manufacturers

Manawatu Times, Volume LV, Issue 7135, 5 February 1930, Page 13

BELFAST MUST STUDY THE WORLD’S STYLES Conservative Manufacturers

LINEN TRADE IS NOT ABREAST OF OVERSEAS REQUIREMENTS BELFAST. “The mind of the American woman 1* educated up to the point where she expects beauty of colour, design and form in everything, and what she expects she will have." This is one of the conclusions reached by the representatives of the Irish and Scottish linen industry who recently made a tour of the United States and Canada in order to study the needs of these, important markets. For almost a generation the linen manufacturers have been too conservative and self-satisfied. Conscious of the fact that their products are of high Quality and undoubted durability, they have made the mistake of trying to make the world buy what they &ake insteid of making the articles that the world wants to buy. The consequence is that their trade has languished while Continental competitors have seized large slices of the markets in which they once were supreme. The tour made by a score of the leaders of the industry was an eyeopener. For the first time many of these leaders began to realise how far they had fallen behind, and how desperate their position was becoming. The delegates’ greatest discovery in the United States, perhaps, was the importance attached to style- So far the '‘‘industry has almost ignored this vital fulcrum to trade. The same old designs have been followed year after year, with perhaps the substitution of a rose for a shamrock or a shamrock

for a rose. The delegates say that this policy must be abandoned at once. Without exception, they say: “Every linen buyer, merchandise manager and director of a store whom we consulted in the United States, when asked what is the chief factor affecting the sale of linen, answered ‘style.’ " They declared that “80 per cent, of tho goods purchased in America are purchased by women. The American woman to-day _is acutely style conscious.. She is extraordinarily well informed. The publications which women read in the States to-day are highly educative, and they are read by the ordinary American woman with a great deal of appreciation. Not only arc they read, but they are studied, understood and remembered.’’

Among the recommendations of the delegates were: (1) The employment of industrial stylists for the trade; (2) the elimination of unprofitable lines to the introduction of standardised qualities and sizes for certain classes of goods; (3) the establishment of a bureau which would keep the trade frilly informed of the activities of other trades; (4) a standard basis of costing; (s)' elimination of waste in distribution; (6) an extension of tech-nical-education; (7) greater efforts to gTOw flax in the British Empire; (8) intensive propaganda.