Textile innovation to get excited about, with Crispin Argento

Crispin Argento, Director of the Sourcery, shares what new technologies in the textile space are exciting him.

May 19th, 2021

Written by Crispin Argento

The world is both a scary and beautiful place.

A world full of natural wonders overrun by a population of living beings both destroying and preserving their waning environment simultaneously. While it can be overwhelming to think about all the damage being done, something that may put your mind at ease is knowing that there are people working day and night to change the very fabrics and DNA of industries in an effort to create a more sustainable world. 

Crispin Argento, Director of The Sourcery, weighs in on some of the technologies and innovations exciting him.

Tracing

There are a number of innovations in raw fibres and textiles. With FibreTrace® and its traceability technology, it's not just critical for cotton but it's critical for all fibres, whether that is sustainable wool, or viscose or cashmere.

I think that is the number one innovation that will fundamentally transform the way that commodities are traded. Meaning, we will shift from a commodity-driven preferred fibre market to a de-commoditised model where we are nominating specific growers to produce cotton for us that have a differentiated value like Good Earth Cotton® does or like certain organic programs do. Where brands will say ‘I want to work with this particular grower, who is adopting these practices’ - I think that this is the biggest innovation.

Sourcing

Some of the brands that I work with at The Sourcery as well as some of the suppliers are innovating to the point where they are willing to take the initiative to go down to the farm. That is critical. When brands begin purchasing cotton lint from a particular grower or particular spinners, after meeting with them and viewing their practices, that is a new form of sourcing that will transform the industry. 

Robotics

A third innovation is robotics as a new way of farming - at least at a large scale and industrial level. This will also have implications for smallholders, particularly for organic and the ability to use less pesticides as the robots replace the need for heavy chemicals. This is already being deployed in large scale farms with some of the technologies that John Deer have deployed where they are using minimal pesticides because they are able to pinpoint, almost to laser accuracy, the weeding that is necessary vs an organic scenario, in a smallholder scenario, where you actually have human labour that is going out and weeding regularly to ensure that those weeds don't intervene with the growth and health of your crop. 

Those are the three innovations, one is short term, one is medium term and the last is long term but I would really like to see a world where all brands are nominating their sustainable fibre - direct to grower, direct to producer. 

And this is happening. Large brands and large suppliers are doing this because they want to do what is right but they also want to recognise that there is too much risk in holding certificates that they can't actually defend. We are seeing that in a very big way with the Xinjiang crisis in China - there is no way right now that a t-shirt or a pair of jeans that are coming from China can be identified as being forced labour or not without transparency.