International Textile

Indian home furnishing products catching up fast globally

The Home furnishing being an inseparable segment of the textiles and clothing sector , is currently picking up very fast to capture the markets the world over. This is evident from the fact that the Global market size for home textiles is about US $ 70 billion and has been growing at a consistent rate 5% in the last five years whereas the USA is the worlds single biggest market with a size of US $ 18 billion market followed by the European union at $ 15 billion. The diverse structure of the Indian Textile industry coupled with its close linkage with its ancient culture and tradition provides it with the unique capacity to produce with the help of latest technological inputs and design capability a wide variety of products suitable to the varying consumer tastes and preferences both within the country and overseas. The current size of India Textiles and clothing sector is US $ 36 billion out of which roughly US $12 billion is contributed by Indian export from this sector. The former figure is stated to grow to US $ 85 billion by 2010 and exports to US $ 40 billion . The largest exported item from India is the bedspread, with a global trade share of nearly 3%. Other Home furnishing articles account for almost 2/3 of the total Indian exports in this category. To create a niche in the International market for home furnishing products, two samples were produced with different dyeing effects like contrast color, varying the shades and single-component dyeing on the union fabric. One has 100% polyster filament yarn as the warp and cotton yarn as the weft. The second sample has cotton yarn as the warp and polyster yarn as the weft . The constituent yarns were first dyed to different colors and shades and then woven into Union Fabric . Both the fabrics were treated with stain resistant finish and flame retardant finish. The finished fabrics were tested to analyze their properties. These fabrics were compared with similar fabric prevalent in the home furnishing Industry, like 100% cotton fabric and polyster /cotton blend . The union fabrics were finally converted into standard home furnishing kitchen products like aprons, mittens and napkins . These products were also compared with the regular products for their properties, performance and cost and were fount suitable to consumer tastes and preferences both within the country and overseas