Cotton Marketing.

Cotton is largely sold as a commodity. Pricing therefore follows the commodity rules of demand and supply.

But so is the same for any other fibre substrate like viscose , polyester, nylon etc etc.

Here is an interesting story of a Brand " Lycra " which though a man made fibre changed from commodity to a " Brand"

Lycra the DuPont brand was long perceived as Spandex and with little Textile Use never found its place in the Textile Domain. Lycra then changed its strategy and got itself related to Fashion with its appeal on stretchibility, drape etc. ( Though none of these features actually had a Fashion appeal, but then that is what is marketing ) found a good market share and is now dominant fibre in many textile applications.

Polyester makers also branded their products like Dulon, Pulon, etc etc. However, never had a marketing genius to make a brand which would not take the commodity route. The reason was the overburden of selling large volumes of production flushing out of the spinneretts and managing cash flows. If only Polyester Makers would have chosen to make Polyester with wool texture or silk texture and taken it as small percentage of the total apparel value, it would have gone the lycra way.

In case of Cotton, the story was still more interesting. Egyptian cotton was the best cotton , but failed to Brand itself as "EgCotton " and got connected to the High Value Fashion Brands, hence only got a commodity price, but with only incremental value.

Unless and Until the fibre substrates and machine makers connect there brands to the Ultimate Fashion or Home Textiles, the value of the offerings would remain subject of speculation and the best money would still only be made by the Hedge Funds.

If Oranges, Apples, Bananas could get Branded and were linked to Farms and got priced higher with their brand perceptions, then Cotton no case could have been left out.

Coca Farmers in Africa complain about the money being made by the Swiss Chocolate makers and the story for cotton farmers is no different. The yarn makers and the Fashion brands finally make the money and the farmer only hopes that the crop would get a better price then last year.

The Organic Cotton has given the best opportunity to many a farmers to come out of this vicious cycle of commodity and now is again a chance to Brand correctly and connect to the Fashion World. Cotton Marketing Organizations have to bring value to the Farmers. Commodity any high school drop out can sell.

The next important thing for cotton marketers is the Blow Room Operations. Time has come , where Farmers need to add a Blow room to their Ginning operations. A clean, uniformed, lapped and baled cotton will directly move to the Carding section of the Textile Mill. This would open up two avenues.

Higher value realization for the Farmer > Does a Apple farmer , not clean up and then nicely pack it in boxes and deliver it to the market.

Higher Value to the Spinner : The spinner gets ready to card cotton.

The best advantage of this delivery would be that now cotton can be used with thousands and thousands of Polyester spinning mills without much change. One small change and a very large market opens up for Cotton Farmers.

The 18th century cotton delivery has to now change. It is about time that the supply chain and the user , both see beyond the obvious practices.