Bill Christmann, vice president of Sales for Gehring Tricot Corp., Dolgeville, N.Y., sees Techtextil North Americaas more than just a sales platform. He also sees it as a learning opportunity.
“This show is always a great forum to learn – for those with wherewithal to actually seek out this knowledge as opposed to sitting in a chair hoping it walks right up to you,” he said. “(All of these shows) are all good for Gehring Tricot Corp. It’s not what presents itself to us – it’s what we are trained and experienced to extract from these convergences of knowledge and experience. And in this regard, no show fails us and we make many attendees glad they made the trip.”
He called the atmosphere at the McCormick Place “comfortable and spacious” for discussions, adding that attendance was “not heavy but qualified.”
“As has always been the case, the show provided excellent opportunity to have intelligent exchanges with all levels of technical sales – suppliers of raw materials to us as a very diverse vertical domestic mill … peers of industry… and existing and potential new partners across a nice breath of markets,” Christmann said. “The quality of new leads or new business with existing partners was exceptional.”
Gehring Tricot Corp offers the widest range of vertically produced domestic textiles, with hundreds of developments made annually, he added.
“We provide a smorgasbord of interesting offerings done for markets as diverse as intimate apparel to composites to military and personal protection and countless others,” Christmann said. “The pollination of these fabrics from one industry to another creates very productive benchmarks for further innovation.
“Our main message at this show was to share that in the era of a diminishing landscape of domestic mills, at Gehring, quite the opposite story of growth exists,” he added. “The ongoing plans and progress for continued expansion – not only of buildings and locations as well as a very diverse range of knitting, weaving and finishing equipment additions –will allow for an even wider offering of vertical innovation based here in the USA through Gehring Tricot Corp. What is now arguably the most diverse mill will be even more so.”
