Global Executive Reminds Technical Fabrics Leaders at Techtextil That "The Competition Never Sleeps"
2008.04.02
Delivering the keynote address for Techtextil (April 1, 2008), Glen Raven President and CEO Allen E. Gant, Jr., reminded performance fabrics companies from around the world that "the competition never sleeps" in a global economy and successful companies in the future will be those that can transcend provincial thinking for a world view.
"When someone asks me what is our global strategy I correct them by saying we don't have a global strategy, we have a business strategy," Gant said in remarks prepared for Techtextil, one of the world's leading trade conferences for technical fabrics markets. "Our global strategy and our business strategy are one in the same. All business strategies today must be global."
Gant served as the keynote speaker for the international conference, delivering a presentation entitled "The Competition Never Sleeps - How a 127-Year-Old North Carolina Textile Company Transformed Itself into a Global Source for Innovative Solutions."
"I was fortunate to be exposed to global aspects of the textile industry at an early age," Gant said. "In 1951, my father joined a group of American textile executives who were assisting England with the rebuilding of their textile industry following World War II. At the tender age of two, I began joining my father on trips overseas, and we both learned first hand that the textile industry extended far beyond the shores of the United States and America did not have a lock on technology or innovation."
Gant, grandson of the founder of Glen Raven, continues to foster a global perspective at Glen Raven, the family business he has served since 1971. This perspective led Glen Raven to expand internationally, acquiring Dickson, SA of France in 1998 and opening a business center in China during 2007. Over the years, Glen Raven has also exited unprofitable commodity businesses, focusing on value-added technical fabrics that are based on intellectual capital and advanced technology.
"The past two decades have been among the most challenging in our long history because there is no playbook for transitioning a 127-year-old textile company to a 24/7 global economy," Gant said. "The expansion of the textile industry around the world has made our company stronger."
Gant said that while there are several elements critically important to success in a global economy, the most important are acceptance of cultural differences and willingness to capitalize on a global infrastructure of communications and logistics.
"Within the past 10 years, the global trade infrastructure has come of age through advances in communications and logistics," he said. "If you do not use this infrastructure to expand your operations worldwide, your competition will. The world is truly flat."
Also important to success in the global economy are flexibility in the face of increasingly complex and volatile markets and a commitment to innovation.
"Innovation is not the most important thing, it is the only thing," Gant said. "New ideas are no longer limited by geography or time. Capital will seek out the most innovative products and services. Your goal must be to generate innovative ideas ahead of anyone else, capitalize on those ideas quickly and be prepared to exit and pursue other new ideas based on changing market and competitive conditions."
Gant said that Glen Raven is continuing to evolve as evidenced by a recently launched joint venture in India and creation last year of a distribution subsidiary, Tri Vantage™, formed through the acquisition of two of the nation's leading distributors in awning and marine markets.
"As I remind my colleagues almost every day, the competition never sleeps, which is an incredibly humbling thought," Gant said. "It is always 6 a.m. somewhere in the world and someone is hard at work on the next great innovation that will redefine markets. We should all set our alarm clocks for 6 a.m. and commit ourselves to creating the next great innovation that we can market not only in Des Moines, but also in London, Paris and Hong Kong."
