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Frequently Asked Questions

What is NC Textile Connect?
NC Textile Connect is a website that was created and is maintained at the North Carolina State University College of Textiles with initial funding from the North Carolina Department of Commerce. It is designed to serve as an information warehouse that  “connects” global textile event, product, market, and company information from government, industry, and academic sources to the North Carolina textile complex.  This project builds on a research study completed in Summer 2006 by the College of Textiles entitled, “State of the Union of the Textile Industry in North Carolina: Improving Global Market Competitiveness with Identification and Assistance of Core Competencies.”

Why was NC Textile Connect Created?
The results of the 2006 study indicated that the North Carolina textile complex still consists of over 1,340 establishments that employ over 120,000 people in 90 of North Carolina’s 100 counties. These results may seem quite surprising when the media is constantly producing headlines about another textile manufacturing plant closing. Whereas it cannot be denied that the United States has experienced an unprecedented number of job losses in textile manufacturing over the last decade, what the media has failed to portray is the subsequent growth in management, new product development, design, logistics, research, and manufacturing in emerging niche product markets. Unfortunately many of these opportunities are missed because they are not contained within the traditional ‘manufacturing’ industry codes assigned to represent the textile industries.

To further complicate this matter, the information that does exist on today’s textile complex is increasingly fragmented. Existing information is maintained by individual segments of the value chain, many of which require a membership to access. The textile industries lack a resource that recognizes and supports the entire textile complex.

The goal of NC Textile Connect is to build such a resource by providing vital information in a comprehensive, user-friendly format that will be available to the public free of charge. NC Textile Connect portrays today’s global textile complex through a holistic framework that includes the entire value chain, and not just the traditional manufacturing industries. For more information on this framework, please see the FAQ page on Textile Connect.

What is Textile Connect? www.textileconnect.com
Textile Connect is the gateway website into both the SC and NC Textile Connect websites. Here you can find information on the U.S. textile complex as well as descriptive information on how to use each of the Textile Connect websites.

How was the company information generated on NC Textile Connect?
The initial company information provided on the Textile Connect websites was collected as part of the initial research studies conducted at NC State to identify the existing members of the textile complex. The initial data provided was collected solely from secondary sources available via the Internet.