By Andrew Coulsen, CEO, Spandex Group

June, 2024

The Spandex Group is home to companies that cater to many specialist and dynamic sectors with a number of growth opportunities across multiple verticals, from visual communications, to automotive, to building window films and décor.

A key sector experiencing sustained growth is textiles. Within the Spandex Group, the sector is served by Berger Textiles, a specialist provider of complete textiles solutions and services.

I recently sat down with Alessandro Lanfranconi, Berger Textiles CEO, for this blog to explore the company’s ambitions, unique customer proposition and next steps in this fast-paced market.

AC: Alessandro, we’re here in Luxembourg and it’s the perfect time to talk about opportunities in textiles. To start, could you share some background to Berger Textiles and how it fits within the Spandex Group?

Well, Berger Textiles is an international provider of digitally printable textile solutions with over 170 years of tradition and experience in the market. And it’s a really exciting time to be leading this company. Since joining the Spandex Group a decade ago with the aim of increasing the range of products and solutions available to customers in the visual communication space, Berger Textiles has continued to grow and diversify.

Today, we are present in multiple market segments – our original visual communications market and also architectural, home and décor, and garments.

AC: Could you outline the core Berger Textiles product offering, and explain the types of customers you work with?

Our core product offering for the visual communications market caters to customers looking for both woven and knitted textiles and includes three award-winning soft-signage fabrics: Samba®, the current market segment leader; Lumina®, our award-winning light box fabric; and Mozaik®, a blackout material which offers outstanding technical properties for display frame systems, banners and backdrops. In addition, our home & décor ranges cater to demand for functional architectural textiles that can help designers and installers to overcome practical challenges, such as smell and noise absorption in demanding interior spaces.

AC: What’s the secret to Berger Textiles successful portfolio evolution in recent years?

Our portfolio has been developed in response to insights from our audience. We’re experts in product research and development, but that can only work if we maintain an open dialogue with our customers to ensure that we’re meeting their needs. Across all our products, we can trace the success of our product development efforts to our brand values:

• Competence – We have a very high level of competence, with expert textile engineers working on the R&D of new products, in direct contact with customers in the print shop day-to-day. This means that customers can benefit from tailored and expert advice, whatever their needs;
• Product innovation – Our direct customer feedback cycle has been instrumental, for example in the changes that are being introduced with our sustainability initiatives;
• Quality – We hold high-quality standards for our products. At Berger Textiles we have our own internal quality department where we carry out and control product testing;
• Service – By this we mean that we can guarantee immediate availability of a wide range of products for fast delivery to customers, so they can have the textiles they need quickly without needing to invest in stock themselves.

AC: What have been the key trends and areas of innovation that Berger Textiles has focused on and why?

Sustainability continues to be a key focus. Earlier this year we formally shared our Sustainability Manifesto, which reaffirms our commitment to a more sustainable and circular business. From a product perspective, we have delivered this in a number of ways, from launching the new EVO range, which offers textiles produced using GRS-certified* recycled yarn, to commencing lifecycle assessments (LCAs) for our best-selling Samba® and Samba® EVO ranges, which break down each stage in the life of the product to calculate its overall carbon footprint.

We’ve also continued to invest and innovate in the décor segment, with functional textiles capable of absorbing noise and smells. These developments capitalise on significant growth opportunities and complement Spandex’s wider offering for customers in the architectural segment.

AC: Textile materials for soft signage applications have also received a lot of attention over the last couple of years. What would you say is driving this?

Textile substrates have certainly made a big impact, thanks to the practicality, portability, shipping flexibility and ease of mounting and demounting of textiles. When used with aluminium frames, customers are also discovering how easy it is to reuse textile installations. This is an attractive proposition as businesses continue to look for more sustainable ways to participate in exhibitions and events, for example.

AC: How does the wider Spandex Group support Berger Textiles and your customers?

Being part of an organisation with deep expertise in the visual communications sector and a growing proposition for vertical markets such as architectural, helps us to develop our understanding of customer needs, and to combine Berger Textiles products with other Spandex offerings to provide customers with a comprehensive portfolio of solutions. The global reach of the Spandex organisation is valuable in helping us to fast-track our market presence in new geographies.

When I look at the Spandex Group, our ability to work together and adopt best practices from other group businesses, supports our commitment to continuous development and improvement.

AC: Thinking about the year ahead for Berger Textiles, what are you most excited about?

Growth! I’m pleased to say that the textiles sector has enjoyed strong recovery in 2023 after COVID, and we continue to see strong demand. I’m also excited for the changes happening in our North American business, a key growth market for us and where we announced a number of investments in people over the past year. We also continue to explore new and emerging markets around the world, including the Middle East, where we were present at FESPA Middle East earlier this year, and Latin America.

As I’ve said, by offering versatility, reusability and flexible applications, the growth and potential of textiles is boundless – both within soft signage and beyond. The year ahead is full of potential for us and our customers.

Keep following the Spandex blog to learn more about the sectors we cover, or contact the Spandex team for tailored, expert guidance and support for your business needs.

Author – Andrew Coulsen

Andrew Coulsen is the CEO of Spandex Group, one of the world’s leading suppliers of materials, sign systems, displays and equipment to the sign making, graphics, architectural and vehicle wrapping markets.