Transcript chapter 4 PowerPoint

Chapter Three of Lycra: How a
Fiber Shaped America focuses
on one of Dupont’s diversified
divisions – textile fibers – and
how it took advantage of social
change and popular culture to
identify itself with the
emerging women’s market
after World Wars I and II,
creating new chemical fibers
for modern life
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
Gunpowder and explosives
were the original Dupont
products, essential products
in the early nineteenth
century when vast tracts of
North America was being
opened for settlement, and
also essential for national
defense in the War of 1812,
World War I and other
conflicts.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
• However, in the early twentieth century, anti-war
sentiment and concern about monopoly control
of the explosives market led Dupont to diversify,
using the scientific technology they had applied
to explosives to the development of products like
plastics.
• They also set out to change the public image of
the company. Instead of emphasising the public,
masculine sphere with its negative connotations
of conflict, they began to associate themselves
with the private domestic arena, peacetime and
the emerging female consumer.
©2011Taylor and Francis
In the 1920s, women
were entering the
working world, driving
automobiles, voting for
the first time, demanding
cheaper and better
clothes and goods for the
home, and acting as
purchasing agents for the
whole family.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
Spotting the potential
of this new market, a
Dupont report noted:
‘now that women had
the asking power, there
was almost no end to
the good things women
demanded of industry
and especially its
chemical branch’.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
‘What women want’ and market research
Dupont’s diversification coincided with the rise
of market- or consumer-research: the
attempt to find out what people wanted in a
systematic and ‘scientific’ manner.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
Dupont were particularly
interested in synthetic fibers
and fabrics made using chemical
processes. When they
undertook market research to
find out what women wanted
from synthetic textiles, women
said they wanted cloth and
clothes that were stain
resistant, easy to clean and care
for, held their shape, and were
reasonably priced.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
Because of its
unrivalled chemical
expertise, once the
company knew what
women wanted,
Dupont was able to
invent high
performance fibers to
order.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
Dupont’s ‘family of fibers’
Ultimately, Dupont invented
and/or developed seven synthetic
fibers: rayon, acetate, nylon,
Dacron (polyester),Orlon (acrylic),
Neoprene and Lycra.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
• But when they had invented them, Dupont
encountered strong consumer resistance. Despite
having said they wanted the new synthetic fibers,
women were reluctant to buy them because they
didn’t believe they would ‘work’.
• This was a classic example of phenomena well
known to anthropologists – the difference
between what people say they want and what
they really want, and the difference between
what people say they do, and what they really do.
An important part of the anthropology of stuff is
recognizing these differences.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
Dupont discovered that in
order to be successful, it
had to do more than invent
new fibers- it had to
change popular culture,
and sell a new way of living
and of thinking about cloth
to manufacturers, retailers
and consumers.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
Inventing a new material world
• To create a new ‘cloth culture’, Dupont built up an
unparalleled textile marketing department, embracing
market research, advertising, promotion, publicity and
retail services which literally transformed the way people
thought about, made, sold and used synthetic fibers and
fabrics.
• Recommended reading on marketing synthetic fibers:
O’Connor, Kaori 2008. The Body and the Brand: How Lycra
Shaped America. In Blaszczyk (ed)2008, Producing Fashion:
Commerce, Culture and Consumers. Philadelphia,
University of Pennsylvania Press, pp 207-227.
© 2011TaylorandFrancis
But no company can just
‘invent culture’, and
Dupont’s success lay in the
way they were able to
harness technology to new
patterns of work and
leisure, and to an emergent
group of consumers – the
children of the Post World
War II baby boom - the
‘Babyboomers’.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
The Babyboomer cohort
• a cohort is a group defined by common characteristics.
• A birth cohort is a group defined as being born within a
particular period of time
• The Babyboomer birth cohort is defined as being born
between 1945/6 and1964/5
• The Babyboomer birth cohort was the largest birth cohort in
history.
• Dupont began to produce new materials such as easy care
fabrics and unbreakable plastics for this new cohort, and
thought of them as the future consumer market for Dupont
products.
©2011 Taylor and Francis
• In the women’s market, Dupont’s first great popular success
with synthetic fibers was nylon stockings, which sold out
across the country on the first day they went on sale in 1940.
• Unlike today, skirts and dresses were standard everyday wear
for women then, always worn with stockings.
• 64 million pairs of nylon stockings were sold in the first year
alone, an unprecedented figure.
• From then on, Dupont were on the lookout for ‘the new
nylon’: a new fiber, to be used in a mass-market garment that
women ‘had’ to own and wear.
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS – CHAPTER THREE
1. Dupont had to change the way people thought
about synthetic fibers in order to sell them. Can you
think of other companies who also ‘create culture’
to sell their products? What do they sell, and how
do they do it?
2. What products today are things that everyone feels
they ‘have’ to own, and why?
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
3) How would you overcome the methodological problem of the
difference between what people say they want, and what
they really want?
4) Generation X is sometimes called ‘Generation Sushi’ because
they were the cohort that popularized this food. Generation Z
is sometimes called the ‘Net generation, because they grew
up with and on the Internet. What products do you think
epitomize your birth cohort and why?
5) What products and companies can you think of that are
‘gendered’, and why do you think so?
© 2011 Taylor and Francis
•