The Textile Industry

The textile industry witnessed a unique development that started in Britain, since the spinning and weaving machines have been invented here. In recent years, all over the world, there has been high production of wool, cotton and silk and this only contributed to boosting the world economy.

With the launch of textile industry in the UK, the textile production was passed over to Europe and North America, in the 19th century, after mechanization was also introduced in these areas. In time, other countries especially in Asia have started to invest more in industrializing their economies and the textile sector gained more ground. Thus, Japan, India, Hong Kong and China were eventually leading producers, since due labor force was cheap.

The industrial revolution in the 18th century acted as an incentive for the growth of textile industry, and mass production of clothing was turned into mainstream industry. Later, in the 20th century textile industry gained a rather bad reputation since the labor force was made of immigrants working in illegal "sweat shops", workers being paid less than minimum wages.

While globalization has contributed to outsourcing the manufacturing process, in those areas where textile trade was common, the focus was later changed to the whiter collars, and so the industry of fashion design, and fashion modeling have began to flourish. Also known in the United Kingdom and Australia as the Rag Trade, the Textile Industry is concerned with designing and manufacturing clothing items, together with distributing using textiles .

Now the global textile market is worth more than $400, according to present statistics, even if the industry was faced with fierce competition coming from other industries, but also opportunities. It is estimated that between 2002 and 2010, the global textile production is likely to grow by 25 percent, and the region that is going to bring a major contribution to this growth is Asia.

The one that has taken many steps forward to help the textile industry grow is The World Trade Organization (WTO). In the year 1995, adopted Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), according to which, all quotas on textile and clothing will be removed for WTO member countries. Despite this and the high tariffs imposed, as well as the quantitative restrictions, exports of textiles coming from developing countries are still growing.