While many view textiles as a sunset industry, this 40-year old mill has continued to reinvent itself so that it continues to create value to its customers.

L.V.W. Group Co., Ltd. provides value in terms of product quality, pricing and the level of service it delivers.
The company does circular knitting and 100% cotton remains its champion product.

“Being a textile mill is like running a restaurant. We have to keep adapting ourselves to meet what our customers want. So daily adaptations and daily communication with our customers is what we are really strong at,” said Vitaya Likittanawong.

“Customers choose us because we are able to respond to their urgent needs, and we are able to respond to their costing requirements as well.

Helping to Change the Industry’s Image

Over the past five years, the company has focused on making its products more sustainable.

“Being a textile mill is like running a restaurant. We have to keep adapting ourselves – sometimes daily – to meet what our customers want.”

“There’s a lot of talk that textiles is a very polluting industry. We have to reduce our carbon footprint and at the same time, we want to offer our customers sustainable materials and help make the environment better. Our aim is to be a very sustainable company.

“We have invested a lot of research and development in reducing the water and energy consumption. We’ve upgraded our machines to those that use useless water,” said Mr. Likittanawong.

L.V.W. Group is also using solar panels and solar energy now contributes up to 20 percent of its energy requirements.

“We are selling a lot of products to U.S. brands so we needed to get into the U.S. Cotton Trust Protocol^® fast. By being part of this program it gives our customers confidence that we are very conscious about our supply chain so that in the end they trust us.” he said.

Controlling Quality

Quality starts with the raw materials. The final product is usually not much better than the materials it’s made from.

“The number one reason that we use U.S. cotton is that we found that we could improve our efficiency during production due to the better quality of the fibers.

“And the second thing that we like about U.S. cotton is that it creates value to our end customers in terms of hand feel and appearance. And thirdly, with U.S. cotton there’s very little to no contamination.

“The price might be a little bit higher but the lack of contamination means that we don’t need to deal with contamination issues after the production is completed. That means that defect rates will go down significantly. This actually makes it even more even more cost effective to use U.S. cotton. So it creates value for both us as a supplier and also to our end customers as well,” said Mr. Likittanawong.

Brands are increasingly asking for U.S. cotton yarns and fabrics, not only in the U.S. but around the world.

“With what CCI is doing in Thailand, there is a great awareness of U.S. cotton locally here as well. So a lot of local brands are actually preferring to use U.S. cotton for their products and also in other Asian countries.

“We supply to many garment companies in Southeast Asia, East Asia and also Central America. A lot of customers are actually requesting U.S. cotton now because it adds value to their products,” he said.

Ultimately it comes down to creating products that are high quality, sustainable and transparent – and backing them with excellent service.

“A lot of things change… technology changes and markets change, but I think the demand for 100% cotton apparel will always be there, even 10 years, 20 years, or 30 years from now,” said Mr. Likittanawong.