JTATM - North Carolina State University

Mission Statement

To establish a high quality forum relevant to the needs of global industry and higher education that will provide leadership in the timely dissemination of information dealing with all aspects of textile and apparel, technology and management.

Textile Connect: Connecting the North Carolina Textile Complex

Stacey Frederick, PhD Student

What is Textile Connect?

Textile Connect is an information warehouse created and maintained by North Carolina State University’s College of Textiles with initial funding from the North Carolina Department of Commerce. Textile Connect is designed to connect global textile event, product, market, and company information from government, industry, and academic sources to the North Carolina textile complex. Textile Connect is in the form of a website that can be found at the following two web addresses: www.nctextileconnect.com and www.textileconnect.com. This project builds on the research study completed in Summer 2006 by the College of Textiles entitled, “State of the Union of the Textile Industry in North Carolina: Improving Global Market Competitiveness with Identification and Assistance of Core Competencies.”

Why is Textile Connect Needed?

The results of the 2006 study indicated that the North Carolina textile complex still consists of over 1,400 establishments that employ nearly 120,000 people in 90 of North Carolina’s 100 counties. These results represent the restructuring of the North Carolina textile complex with decline in textile manufacturing and growth in management, new product development, design, logistics, research, and manufacturing in growing niche product markets. Unfortunately many of the growth opportunities are missed because they are not contained within the traditional industry codes assigned to represent the U.S. textile industries.

NC Textile Connect is a collaborative project of NC State College of Textiles and the North Carolina Department of Commerce.

To further complicate this matter, the information that does exist on the textile complex is increasingly fragmented. Existing information is maintained by individual segments of the value chain, many of which require a membership to access. The textile industries lack a resource that recognizes and supports the entire textile complex.

The goal of Textile Connect is to provide such a resource by supplying vital information in a comprehensive, user-friendly format that is available to the public free of charge within the domain of one website.

Who is the Textile Complex?

The first step in the project was to clearly identify the North Carolina textile complex. The 2006 study uncovered that the textile complex includes more than just the industries included for statistical purposes (yarn, fabric, finishing, apparel, and home product manufacturing) using the United States’ North American Industrial Classification (NAIC) system. In addition to these industries, analysis should be expanded to all of the members of the textile complex including:

Pre-production inputs and activities such as raw materials, fibers, research, design, development, and inbound logistics
Production of diverse products for markets outside of the apparel and home furnishings markets such as the medical, transportation, industrial, recreational, and agricultural markets
Post-production activities including distribution, wholesale, packaging, labeling, marketing, retail, and after-sale services; and the
Supporting environment consisting of machinery, training institutions, trade associations, and regulatory bodies.

The Textile Value Chain

Textile Connect portrays thetextile complex through a holistic framework that includes the entire value chain. An industry’s value chain includes the full range of activities that firms and workers carry out to bring products from conception to end-use and beyond. This includes production as well as design, marketing, distribution and support to the final consumer.

To identify these specific actors for the textile complex, NAIC codes were identified and matched to each specific industry based on empirical research and the compilation of several datasets and resources over the last two years. Once these industries and codes were identified, they were put into a visual depiction to represent the textile value chain. One of the unique features of the website is the ability to traverse through the information for each stage of the value chain through the use of this visual depiction. The visualization is designed to give users a better sense of how the textile complex is connected to other stages in the supply chain, other tangential industries, and the supporting environment.

How will Textile Connect be maintained?

Personnel from the College of Textiles will continuously update the website, however the future content of Textile Connect is highly dependent on the members of the textile complex. The most useful websites are those that are created in collaboration with the users themselves. If you have any information you would like to see added to Textile Connect, or suggestions for future website developments, please contact Stacey Frederick, creator and Textile Connect project manager: sefreder@ncsu.edu

College of Textiles
P.O. Box 8301
Raleigh, NC 27695-8301
Telephone: (919) 515-6632
FAX: (919) 515-3733
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Last Site Revision:
August 28, 2007