THE HISTORY & LIFE-CYCLE OF DENIM

Where is cotton grown?

•  Grown in warm climates

•  Mostly grown in the U.S. •  the states that grow cotton are

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, Florida, Kansas and Virginia.

•  Uzbekistan, the People’s Republic of China and India.

•  Although growing cotton only takes place on 2.5% of the world’s agricultural land, it consumes 16% of all the insecticides and 6.8% of all the herbicides in the world (monoculture and very pesticide-intensive crop).

•  pesticides wash out of soils and pollute rivers/ground water

•  pests develop resistance to chemicals used on regular basis

•  the chemicals can eliminate not only pests but natural enemies as well – this messes with the ecosystem and reduces biodiversity – can result in pests that weren’t normally a problem becoming a problem

•  when cultivated intensely, cotton requires large amount of water for irrigation – this causes soil salinization – degradation of soil fertility

•  the use of industrial fertilizers releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere

•  as well, the use of nitrates to agricultural land leads to them being transformed into nitrous oxide – a greenhouse gas 300 times more destructive than CO2

•  CARDING ��� - the cotton is put through a machine

with bent wire brushes. The brushes clean, disentangle, straighten, and gather the cotton threads into sliver. It breaks up locks and unorganized clumps of fibers and then aligns the individual fibers to be parallel with each other

•  SPINNING ��� - After several slivers are joined

together, they are put on spinning machines that twist and stretch the cotton to form yarns.

- Spinning process prepared cotton roving into workable yarn or thread

•  DYEING: - Denim is usually dyed with chemically

synthesized indigo before being woven. Large balls of yarn, called ball warps, are dipped in the indigo mixture several times so that the dye covers the yarn in layers.

•  WEAVING THE YARN INTO DENIM� - The yarn is then woven on large

mechanical looms. Denim is not 100 percent blue, as the blue dyed threads forming the warp are combined with white threads forming the weft. �

& TEXTILE MILLS�

C L O T H I N G MANUFACTURERS�

•  Denim mills and clothing manufacturers exist in places all over the world, including China, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan, South America, Spain, Turkey and the United States. ���

•  Prominent places probably being China, India and the United States. Denim mills include Blue Diamond (China), Aqua Fabrics (Italy) and Swift Galey (United States).���

•  Clothing manufacturers include A and M International New Dehli (India), Foreign Trade Clothing Factory (China) and Pineapple Clothing Company (United States). ���

LEVI’S �

MARKETING COMPARISON���

•  Conservative and conventional

•  Target Market •  Individuals in the workforce •  families

•  Focus on consumers’ needs and quality

•  Concern more about the needs of the consumers

•  Through this marketing positioning, consumers feel a sense of trust and they can feel that LEVI’s is a credible brand that produces high-quality products.

•  TARGET MARKET: •  Young people •  Trendy and fashionable

•  Unconventional and innovative; ads are vulgar

•  More concern with being trendy and encouraging their customers to opt for the alternative

•  Consumers feels a sense of freedom and originality