NET-FIN-TEX Description
NET-FIN-TEX
‘NETworking FINancial investors, business experts and support organisations to foster enhanced innovation activity among Europe’s TEXtile and clothing companies’
Co-ordination action
Strategic background
Due to the highly fragmented structure of the industry, innovation activities often lack continuity, strategic direction, human and knowledge resources and, above all, funds. In this highly traditional business with average low margins and high mortality rate due to fierce competition from Far East, European banks are increasingly reluctant to provide textile SMEs with the needed liquidity partly because of a shift towards a more careful risk-policy.
Although private equity and venture capital activities have been experiencing a great development in Europe, they are notoriously underdeveloped in the textile-clothing sector. Furthermore the highly complex textile and clothing industry is characterised by several players along the value chain thus complicating the assessment of risk by investors. Another major issue concerns the need to tackle industrial creativity and intellectual property in a coordinated fashion to eliminate the rampant illegal copying of designs and brands.
In light of these challenges facing the industry, NET-FIN-TEX will address the need to “map” expertise in innovation financing across Europe as well as the financial instruments and schemes which cover all the stages and players along the complicated textile value chain.
Objectives of the NET-FIN-TEX project
The overarching goal of the NET-FIN-TEX project is to:
establish a permanent European Textile and Clothing innovation financing expert network whose activities and findings will be closely related to the horizontal task groups of the European Textile and Clothing Technology Platform, in particular those dealing with Innovation Management and easier access to capital.
The above goal has been split into six specific objectives:
O1 / To establish a pan-European network in the Textile and Clothing Sector.O2 / To analyse success factors and barriers to innovation financing.
O3 / To identify and systematically review public and private funding instruments, sources and mapping related application fields in the innovation space.
O4 / To develop an integrated model with information and guidelines addressed to textile firms for the retrieval of best practices in innovation financing and location of proper funding options
O5 / To disseminate information to all interested parties through an on-line knowledge repository and a collaborative platform for project partners and other associated organizations.
O6 / To prepare policy recommendations.
Work Plan
The work plan consists of five interlinked work packages including one management work package:
ü WP1 aims to analyse success factors and barriers to innovation financing in the textile and clothing sector, including the drafting of business plans, the preparation of appropriate IP strategies, and the identification of optimal sources for funding investments.
ü WP2 identifies all possible funding options for textile innovation related projects covering the different development stages and capital requirements.
ü WP3 will develop a methodology to guide textile and clothing entrepreneurs towards the most appropriate funding options depending on their needs and specific requirements.
ü WP4 aims to bring the project objectives, activities and results to the attention of all interested stakeholders across the EU and associated countries.
ü WP5 to control, assess and review the overall project success, and to represent the project towards industry, society, policy stake holders and EC.
NET-FIN-TEX consortium
The project consortium has been created to represent the interests of the entire Textile and Clothing supply chain composed of 100.000 SMEs and 12.000 large companies. The readiness of the partners to set up and carry out such a joint initiative has forged a high level of commitment and determination.
CONSORTIUM / Participant organisation name / CountryCoordinator / European Apparel And Textile Organisation (Euratex) / Belgium
Contractors / D'Appolonia S.p.A. (DAPP) / Italy
Sächsisches Textilforschungsinstitut e.V. (STFI) / Germany
Sviluppo Italia Toscana s.c.p.a. (SVIT) / Italy
Deutschen Institute fur Textil-und Faserforschung Stuttgart – ITV Denkendorf (DITF) / Germany
Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School (VLGM) / Belgium
Intellectual Property Law Institute of Jagiellonian University, Krakow (IPLI) / Poland
Centro Sviluppo S.p.A. (CESV) / Italy
Sächsische AufbauBank –Förderbank (SAB) / Germany
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