Performance-enhancing togs

 

The GFC has given a lift to one Australian fabric company, though no one knows why. Stretchtex is working around the clock on its range of performance-enhancing fabrics, as Kate McDonald reports.

Exactly why it happened no one knows, but when the global financial crisis hit, Sydney-based fabric manufacturer Stretchtex put on the night shift.

Stretchtex sales manager Raymond Fuchs isn’t complaining but nor does he have an answer as to why, in the midst of a global downturn, demand is stronger than ever for the sort of high-tech, high-performance fabric his company develops and manufactures.

Performance swimwear is a booming market, so it’s no surprise that 60 per cent of Stretchtex’s output comprises its well-known and respected Chloroban and Aquamax warp knit fabrics. Stretchtex sells over two million metres of these high-tech brands, which are used by premium swimwear labels around the world.

The other 40 per cent is predominantly dedicated to performance-based sportswear fabrics. Perhaps it was the fear of losing the family car that has boosted demand for active sportswear, with everyone hopping on their bikes - and buying up the requisite apparel - that is the answer. Fuchs isn’t sure, but he’s definitely not complaining, with production at the company’s Revesby factory running two 10-hour shifts a day.

Stretchtex has of course been in the business for many years - with Fuchs himself clocking up close to 40 - and has seen trends come and go over that time.

The company does very little in terms of fashion these days, although it does supply small quantities to a few well-known names such as Collette Dinnigan and Lisa Ho, and has moved away from intimate apparel as that market has gone offshore.

What it does best is supply high-performance, innovative fabrics to niches in the high-performance sportswear market, along with its prime swimwear markets.

“There are a lot of niche companies doing specialised garments for specialised sports like rowing, kayaking, cycling, rubgy league, bushwalking, rock-climbing – they are all niche manufacturers that target specific sports,” Fuchs says. “Our fabrics are geared for those sorts of sports, that have a performance element.”

And as high-performance sports become more high-tech, so does the fabric that makes their garments. In recent years, the science of high-performance fabric has come to rival the science of the sports themselves.

One of the most interesting developments has been the use of essential elements such as silver, carbon and titanium in sportswear fabrics. While the science itself is not completely understood, these metals have quite remarkable qualities that, when added to fibres and fabrics in the form of nanomaterials, provide a range of benefits from the anti-microbial to the anti-static.

Silver has long been recognised for its anti-microbial qualities and is in fact used commonly in dressings for surgical and chronic wounds. Carbon is often used for its anti-static properties and titanium, an element now increasingly being used in high-performance fabrics, has a lot of claims made about it.

The most understood is its ability to affect our body’s thermal regulation, which is why it is highly sought after by athletes and the sports scientists behind them. Stretchtex manufactures a range of fabrics using the liquid form of titanium.

“Liquid titanium is produced in a form that is heated to over 1500 degrees C, liquified and then extruded as a polymer or polyester,” Fuchs says. “The fabric is 100 per cent polyester but there are particles of titanium in there, added through nanotechnology. We can impregnate a fibre now because the titanium is melted into a liquid form and then fed into the extrusion process of the polymer.”

Fuchs points out that it is not the fabric industry that makes the claims – it is the yarn producers – but the science is known and proven. “Carbon has the property of being totally anti-static and anti-microbial; silver has the anti-microbial and also the thermal regulation characteristics, both in absorbing your body heat when you are heating up and then storing it when you are cooling down. It keeps your body at a more constant temperature. Liquid titanium does the same thing.

“It is like a performance-enhancing garment – you get a garment that helps you cut your lactic acid, a fabric that gives you the benefits and a combination of garments using fibres that also have benefits for your health and wellbeing and goodness knows what else. That’s what we specialise in.”

Fuchs and his team keep a keen ear out for technical developments in this market and are regularly approached by yarn producers from around the world interesting in what Stretchtex can come up with.

It is using a bamboo charcoal yarn, popular for its ‘natural’ feel, which has the ability to absorb physical odour and increase blood flow. The company is constantly tossing around new ideas for new fabrics and insists on the trial and error approach, Fuchs says. You may have to do 10 trials to get one winner, but if you don’t try you can’t get that winner in the first place.

“We have a few new yarns that we are trialling now for moisture management and for compression wear and microfibres,” he says. “It might take us six or 12 months to get a fabric that we are happy with.”

Compression wear is a booming market, with every rugby league or AFL player on the planet sporting these sexy – and not so sexy, depending on the wearer – tight black tights. “That is quite a large market,” Fuchs says. “Everyone wants to be different from the next guy and every brand in sportswear has a compression range and everyone says theirs is the best.”

Fuchs was at the forefront of this new market, designing the first fabric for compression wear giant Skins, probably the world leader in this market these days although unfortunately no longer manufacturing here. It is a constantly developing industry, says Fuchs, who has probably seen everything there is to see by now.

“I fly by the seat of my pants and that is how we are successful,” he says. “We are quick responders and we are constantly updating and at the forefront of developments.”