VI. Competitive Landscape and Evolving Strategies
i. Changing Competitive Landscape
The nature of competition evolved throughout the life of Gore-Tex. Overall, the nature of the environment can be clustered as pre-1993 and post-1993. When Gore’s exclusive patent on Gore-Tex ended in 1993, the door was open to competition and the company had to think of other strategies to face the changing dynamics of the environment it was operating in. a) Prior to 1993
For over a hundred years, the textile and apparel industry has equaled innovation with price reduction and thus shaped customer expectations. This has had drastic consequences in the old world where the textile value chain has been highly fragmented: the revenues for most individual textile and apparel manufacturers are at best marginal and are seeing increasing pressure with supply-chain-integrated competitors that use cheapest available off-shore manufacturing (mainly Asia). The scale and quality of the emerging Asian textile industry adds to this.
While North America has lost virtually all textile industry not protected by the Barry Amendment3, Europe has retained those that can still differentiate, mostly on performance.
Those competing on price are rarely more than marginally profitable.
With the intro of Gore-Tex™ fabric, Gore has opened up the segment of functional apparel. For several years, Gore enjoyed a proprietary competitive position. This allowed the company to build its ingredient brand to a point where it was able to capture a decent share of the value added. Gore-Tex had a monopoly on the market. The main competitors were the traditional suppliers of fibers or other materials, that did not have the technological characteristics of Gore-Tex. Competition was based on price (with a large gap in the quality and functionality offerings).
At that time, in the fabrics industry, the closest to waterproof materials prior to the invention of Gore-Tex were the non-breathable fabrics made of plastic derivatives. Indeed the latter were waterproof, but they did not offer the breathability attributes of Gore-Tex – so were unsuitable for sportswear applications.
Gore was able to quickly expand the scale of its operations and face all traditional players through the diversification of its product’s applicability to various sectors, and the expansion of its operations internationally:
- Diversifying applicability: Gore’s Gore-Tex products provide innovative solutions in
next-generation derivative high-performance fabrics
VI. Competitive Landscape and Evolving Strategies
i. Changing Competitive Landscape
The nature of competition evolved throughout the life of Gore-Tex. Overall, the nature of the environment can be clustered as pre-1993 and post-1993. When Gore’s exclusive patent on Gore-Tex ended in 1993, the door was open to competition and the company had to think of other strategies to face the changing dynamics of the environment it was operating in. a) Prior to 1993
For over a hundred years, the textile and apparel industry has equaled innovation with price reduction and thus shaped customer expectations. This has had drastic consequences in the old world where the textile value chain has been highly fragmented: the revenues for most individual textile and apparel manufacturers are at best marginal and are seeing increasing pressure with supply-chain-integrated competitors that use cheapest available off-shore manufacturing (mainly Asia). The scale and quality of the emerging Asian textile industry adds to this.
While North America has lost virtually all textile industry not protected by the Barry Amendment3, Europe has retained those that can still differentiate, mostly on performance.
Those competing on price are rarely more than marginally profitable.
With the intro of Gore-Tex™ fabric, Gore has opened up the segment of functional apparel. For several years, Gore enjoyed a proprietary competitive position. This allowed the company to build its ingredient brand to a point where it was able to capture a decent share of the value added. Gore-Tex had a monopoly on the market. The main competitors were the traditional suppliers of fibers or other materials, that did not have the technological characteristics of Gore-Tex. Competition was based on price (with a large gap in the quality and functionality offerings).
At that time, in the fabrics industry, the closest to waterproof materials prior to the invention of Gore-Tex were the non-breathable fabrics made of plastic derivatives. Indeed the latter were waterproof, but they did not offer the breathability attributes of Gore-Tex – so were unsuitable for sportswear applications.
Gore was able to quickly expand the scale of its operations and face all traditional players through the diversification of its product’s applicability to various sectors, and the expansion of its operations internationally:
- Diversifying applicability: Gore’s Gore-Tex products provide innovative solutions in
next-generation derivative high-performance fabrics
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