Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Education, Endorsements and Accredit-ions.: Missed Opportunity.

Mantex Certified Yarn Dyer.

What I like about the IT Industry most is the limitless thinking. There are no borders, no frames, no boundaries. Everything is limited by space of your imagination. It is like Sunlight, which keeps spreading endlessly.

No wonder, IT professionals make millions of dollars and Textile professionals move in circles.

As technology changes so rampantly, there is a constant need to upgrade your skills to catch up with the changes. This need is generally not addressed correctly by the provider. Most of the skill set is left out to the user to exploit the resource and generally the user under values the product on account of low input knowledge. How many of us actually know all the features of our Hand Phones, though while buying, we ensured that we got wrapped up the best features into our purchase. And how many of us have actually gone ahead and used most of the features , if not all.

The most difficult part is : How to make People Read a Book ? In my own life time travelling across the world, I had seen very few and far between professionals, who would read technical books or technical journals or write an article. It is a known fact that during their own time at University, most bunked classes and with  great difficulty opened the books during exams and barely managed to pass.

Therefore, Industry practices then become the way of life for each professional and no one ever challenges the Industry practices. This is also one reason , why Textile has seen very poor Innovations in the last 200 years.

What I like about IT Industry is that there is a continuous learning process throughout the lifetime of the professional.  Because every single day some thing new comes up and every one has to explore the new applications and coding and navigation. If you are not learning, you are on the exit route .

This continuous learning has to come into the culture of all professionals and only then the real value of that Industry will show up. However, unfortunately, this continuous learning cannot be left over to the professional. Because in case of an IT professional, it is still possible to self educate as there are hundreds of programs out there. But for a Textile professional, unless this learning environment is created, the motivation for self learning is very low.

Second, the IT Industry was very smart. Look at the accredit- ions : Microsoft certified , Oracle Certified, Cisco Certified  etc etc. Where as in Textiles, not even one single machine maker saw the opportunity of opening up Continuous Education and Accredit -ions as an opportunity of providing value added services to the Industry.

All it would take is a third party developer to make a short term program and one could as well have it online. For all you know , there are around 1 Million professionals vying to take up the Title of
" Thies Certified Yarn Dyers " or  " Rieter Certified Spinner "  etc etc.

And look at the revenue stream out of it . 100 Euro per person for 100K enrollments per year from around the world is equal to  Euro 1.000,000 ( Euro 1 Million worth of biz with expenditure not more then Euro 200,000) plus the advantage of Brand Visibility and a Brand Loyalty. I am still not writing anything on the Endorsements, where the machine makers could have made another multi million revenue. Say Reiter Endorsed spindles or Trutzheler endorsed carding wire etc etc


The Business Schools are smart, they sell one or the other leadership program ( Though not one professor has ever become leader in his life ) or other management programs and make millions out of this opportunity.


However, as I have written umpteen times, the Textile Industry is a Lazy Thinkers Industry.My friends in Thies make fun of me stating that Atul is the only Super Genius, Super Engineer, Super Marketing God, though, Thies loses orders to the ratio of 5:1 to other machine makers. Atleast for making fun, one has to be a winner or have a success story. 
 I also make fun of them telling that soon their name will change from Thies to Thong and sales guys will have to reincarnate from Ralf to Xing Ming!  Let them keep a plastic surgeon in sight for the mandatory eye ball changes required.






Sunday, July 1, 2012

Timeless Lesson In Marketing of Asian Machines!



Client: “Our next requirement, this is something big, you know, we need an elephant.”
Machine Maker : "But why don’t you adjust with a buffalo, even it is big… and black?”

C: "No, we need only elephant, let me explain our current process"… client explains for an hour.
Machine Maker : "Fine, I understand ur requirement. But our system supports only buffalo."


C:.."We need only elephant!"
Machine Maker : "Ok... Let me see if i can customize.”

Requirement taken : Client wants a big black four legged animal, long tail, less hair. Having trunk is mandatory. The same was documented, signed off and sent to Factory for development!

At Factory Development Centre:

Design/Development – Base on requirement all features are supported in base product (as buffalo), for trunk alone a separate customization is done.

Finally the customization is shown to client.


Client looks...






And Faints




Sales Manager Delivering The Product.




  Interestingly, with European Machines, you order for a "Buffalo" and you get a delivery of an Elephant and that too White . Power Guzzler with prices such that the whole Euro debt has to be paid off from one sale of the machine to you.