Take a seat: These ain't your mama's fabrics
Susan Andrews, Fabric editor -- Furniture Today, September 8, 2003
High Point — A generation ago, the epitome of fabric protection — and admirable housekeeping — was the clear plastic slipcover. No post-war wife and mother worth her salt would allow anything to actually touch her upholstery.
Those plastic covers, which are now campy allusions to the 1950s, began to disappear about 40 years ago when 3M's Scotchgard assumed the throne. The brand practically became a generic term for chemicals that produced "performance" fabrics by giving them water- and soil-resistance and stain-release properties.
Chemical giant DuPont had a similar product called Zepel, which was widely used in apparel. Zepel was phased out about 25 years ago when the company decided to exploit the value of its Teflon brand, which had tremendous consumer acceptance from its early days as a coating for non-stick cookware.
Scotchgard owned the fabric protection market until 2000, when 3M stopped production of the product, citing "principles of responsible environmental management."
That move left a significant void in the furniture world because during those decades, consumers became conditioned to pay extra for an "after-market fabric treatment" and retailers became conditioned to the fat, juicy profit margin it gave them and their sales associates.
Since then, the market has moved to fill the gap for producers and retailers of residential upholstered furniture. Some of the products they offer are fabrics that get their performance properties from specially produced or dyed or finished yarns; some are chemicals applied to fabric after it is woven, whether at the mill or at the upholstery manufacturing plant; and some are engineered processes that encapsulate the fabric fibers with proprietary substances.
In addition to the soil- and stain-resistance properties that are familiar to most consumers, there are other high-performance properties that traditionally have been available in contract fabrics for hospitality and healthcare applications, such as nursing homes and assisted-living communities. Those fabrics, with anti-microbial, odor-resistant and moisture-barrier properties, are now poised to move into residential upholstery as well, as the population ages and the gargantuan baby-boom generation cycles into retirement.
Performance fabrics have the potential to generate a lot of interest at retail. Consumer awareness continues to grow thanks, in part, to the acceptance of microfibers in apparel and high-dollar advertising by manufacturers like Dockers.
The growing popularity of stain-resistant apparel fabrics isn't the only influence on demand for interior fabrics. The move to more outdoor themes in interior furnishings over the past decade also has brought the lightfastness and bleach-cleanability of solution-dyed outdoor fabrics into the home. Resort and coastal markets, especially, value interior fabric designs that are executed in constructions that will not fade in the sun and can stand up to harsh chemicals like chlorine. And new construction in all parts of the country is more frequently including sunrooms.
All these factors will change the way upholstery is sold at retail. In the case of some of the new products, the after-market treatments could be, at best worthless, and at worst, could actually damage the fabric or void its warranty.
In this report, Furniture/Today takes a look at performance fabrics — which companies are producing them, what manufacturers think of them and how they are playing at retail.
