Everyone knows that the US denim industry has been sliding continuously due to rising costs due to which the US denim is becoming uncompetitive.
But while this is true for the competition coming from the Asian countries, where does US stand against the EU ? EU fabric is not cheap and the American fabric should be able to compete with them. But it does not ….
US Denim fabric loses out to the denim from EU on fashion. The US denim mills are not fashion oriented and are not able to compete with the EU on this count. Specially fabrics from countries like Italy has been making its mark in the US with niche high street brands going for either Japanese Denim or the Italian denim fabrics. The figures below will tell the story:
| Imports of | Denim from | USA in EU25 | |||
| Year | Kgs | Amount(Euro) | Linear Mtrs | Av.Price(Euro/kg) | Av.Price(Euro/Mtr) |
| 2000 | 12155100 | 69153986 | 17364429 | 5.69 | 3.98 |
| 2001 | 12826500 | 72871055 | 18323571 | 5.68 | 3.98 |
| 2002 | 11576500 | 66774079 | 16537857 | 5.77 | 4.04 |
| 2003 | 6162600 | 31563427 | 9480923 | 5.12 | 3.33 |
| 2004 | 729000 | 3263745 | 1121538 | 4.48 | 2.91 |
| 2005 | 181900 | 754907 | 279846 | 4.15 | 2.7 |
| 63108165 | |||||
| Total Imp. | from USA = | Approx 63 | million mtrs | ||
| Exports | to USA = | from EU25 | |||
| Year | Kgs | Amount(Euro) | Linear Mtrs | Av.Price(Euro/kg) | Av.Price(Euro/Mtr) |
| 2000 | 3315900 | 17394492 | 4737000 | 5.25 | 3.67 |
| 2001 | 1893600 | 17664059 | 2705143 | 9.33 | 6.53 |
| 2002 | 2471500 | 24918142 | 3530714 | 10.08 | 7.06 |
| 2003 | 2949000 | 25715051 | 4536923 | 8.72 | 5.67 |
| 2004 | 5332000 | 45405347 | 8203077 | 8.52 | 5.54 |
| 2005 | 5169400 | 45306088 | 7952923 | 8.76 | 5.7 |
| 31665780 | |||||
| Total Exp. | to USA = | Approx. 32 | million mtrs |
Major points to note :
a)Till the year 2000, EU and the US were almost neck to neck in terms of the prices of their fabrics.However, US was leading by a big margin in volumes.
b)The graph of USA started to fall from the year 2003 – when both prices and volumes fell sharply.
c)When we come to the year 2005 , we find that the US exports have become almost a trickle and even with these small volumes , the prices are less than 50% of that of EU prices.
d)However, EU has not been able to achieve the kind of volume exports that US was able to do in previous years – mainly because EU deals more in fashion items which are used in smaller quantities.
