THE opportunities for the Australian wool industry to get its relationships right with the booming outdoor leisure apparel market are starkly obvious for marketing guru Mark Brooks.
As The Merino Company’s (TMC) new knitwear manager Mr Brooks has the job of forging new customer relationship with global retail brands for TMC’s wool pool growers.
But he also has to face the constant dilemma of re-educating today’s textile makers about the unique attributes of wool which he said are largely unknown.
“It is an exciting time; the seamless market is growing 10 per cent per annum and there is very little wool used in it so the challenge is to get wool into these garments,” Mr Brooks said.
Mr Brooks, who has 20 years of experience working in apparel innovation with Adidas and Australian Wool Innovation, believes the tide is slowly starting to turn back in favour of wool.
“The blends are the key as a lot of people still don’t know about wool so we have to have something we can open the door with and then after that we can follow up with a 100pc wool garment.”
Unlike the downward global consumer buying trend in luxury and corporate wear, the value of sales within the outdoor, active wear and lifestyle retail brand market continues to rise and is estimated to be worth $US85-$US100 billion per annum.
*Extract from report to appear in Stock & Land, May 7.
