We also foresee increases in on-line purchasing of apparel with the advent of calibrated color monitors available at the consumer level on home PC's. Raelene Boylan - Nedgraphics , New York, NY A rapidly increasing need for Web enabled solutions, including visualization tools and design database archiving. Don Guerriero - Colour Matters, New York, NY Private Label business is up. Branded business is trending downward somewhat. Several big branded names are being very affected by transitional movement away from their brands.
Brands are always subject the attention span of the shopper.
Been a lot of pressure on the economy to slow down, interest rates have gone up a lot over 30 months. Apparel manufacturing needs to have favorable lending climate, it's seasonal cash short falls necessitate short term borrowing. Any increases in the borrowing rate and attitude are hard on apparel. Need example, Fruit of the Loom. Very hard not to have inflationary effect on consumer pricing.