I
n today’s business environment, where “doing more with less” is the order of the day and
workplace stress continues to rise, marketers might do well to add stress management to their list
of product benefits.

Marketers traditionally segment their customers into groups by demographic characteristics
such as age, gender, income, occupation and education; psychographic characteristics such as
attitudes, perceptions and beliefs; or firmographic elements such as business size, industry
classification, job title, purchase decision-maker, or those who influence the purchasing
decision.

The Stressographic Factor



In their book, “Simplicity Marketing:
End Brand Complexity, Clutter and Confusion,” Steven M. Cristol and Peter Sealey suggest adding
what they call “stressographics” to the list of segmentations to use when trying to identify your
target audience. In the business marketplace, stressographics might include job security concerns,
downsizing, the pace of technological change, production efficiency, short-term business results,
pending mergers or acquisitions, and shareholder pressure.

For example, a study by Milwaukee-based Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. reports
one-fourth of employees view their jobs as the number-one stressor in their lives. Three-fourths of
employees believe workers have more on-the-job stress than a generation ago, according to a study
by Princeton Survey Research Associates, Princeton, N.J. And, problems at work are more strongly
associated with health complaints than is any other life stressor — even more so than financial
problems or family problems, according to St. Paul Fire and Marine Insurance Co., St. Paul, Minn.

Job stress has become a common and costly problem in the workplace, reducing productivity,
increasing management pressures and making people ill in many ways. Stress at work also provides a
serious risk of litigation for all employers and organizations, carrying significant liabilities
for damages, bad publicity and loss of reputation. Dealing with stress-related claims also consumes
vast amounts of management time. So, there clearly are strong economic and financial reasons for
organizations to manage and reduce stress at work.

Every customer has personal strategies for coping with and reducing stress. It’s part of the
survival instinct. By observing these strategies among your customers, whether they be formal
stress management programs or less organized techniques, you can position your products and your
brand to be an enabler rather than an obstacle in the war against job-related stress.

The Four R’s

More and more in today’s society, our
customers and we, as consumers, are making buying decisions based on dealing with or escaping
stress. Rather than adding to our customers’ stress by offering more product lines, the Simplicity
Marketing model of Cristol and Sealey suggests the four R’s of Simplicity Marketing rather than the
four P’s —Product, Price, Place and Promotion — of traditional marketing.

The four R’s — Replace, Repackage, Reposition and Replenish — are approaches that help
position your product or service as one that simplifies, and thereby reduces stress.

The first R, Replace, involves developing and positioning products as replacements for
several products, or for a more complicated product or process. “Replace may be as basic as
substituting a simpler product for a more complex one, or may focus on consolidating the number of
products or steps required by the customer to accomplish a particular task or goal,” Cristol and
Sealey write.

Consumer products companies have done a good job of implementing the Replace technique. For
example, hair care products companies introduced a conditioning shampoo that combined shampoo and
conditioner, eliminating the need and cost of buying shampoo and conditioner separately.

The next R, Repackage, bundles together a number of products or services that previously
were available only separately from multiple sources or as separate purchases from the same source.
This approach gives the customer integrated solutions from a single point of contact. Many
retailers, such as drug stores, have incorporated this approach by adding groceries and other items
to repackage themselves as “one-stop shop” brands.

Reposition is the third R, and is defined by Cristol and Sealey as positioning a brand on
the promise of simplicity, or expanding a brand’s positioning to reduce the number of brand
relationships required by the customer.

Streamlining your brand and eliminating sub-brands can declutter the landscape and thereby
reduce customer stress. You can, and should, continually improve your product or service without
introducing a new-and-improved brand or sub-brand to further confuse the marketplace.

The final R, Replenish, focuses on providing a readily available, continuous supply of
zero-defect product or service to existing customers at an acceptable price. One of the first
lessons you learn in business is that it costs more to acquire a new customer than it does to keep
an existing one, so never discount the value of existing customers and their ability to provide
referral business. 

November/December 2006

L
everaging India’s growing strength in the global textile industry, TEXMAC India 2007
International Textile Machinery Exhibition will premiere Jan. 17-20, 2007, at the Pragati Maidan
Exhibition Centre in the country’s capital of New Delhi. More than 15,000 registered visitors
expected at the show’s first edition will view the latest machinery, products and services from a
wide range of exhibitors – situated among 15,000 square meters of hall space.

According to the show’s organizers – Internationaler Messe- und Ausstellungsdienst GmbH
(IMAG), Munich, and Fair Design India Pvt. Ltd. (FDI), New Delhi – TEXMAC capitalizes on the high
manufacturing capabilities and growth potential of India’s textile industry. Accounting for 3
percent of the country’s gross domestic product and 24 percent of all Indian exports, and as the
second-largest employer behind the agriculture sector, the textile and apparel industry is a
significant contributor to India’s economy. Factors that may further strengthen the industry
include investments in new technologies and planned modernization of certain subsectors, the
removal of European Union (EU) and US import quotas, the reduction of import duties for textile
machinery, and economic reforms – such as the 10th Five Year Plan of India (2002-07) and the
privatization of government-owned enterprises. India’s textile production has increased by 33
percent since 2003, and total production value by 2010 is projected to be US$85 billion, the
organizers report.

IMAG and FDI have touted the exhibition as a centralized marketplace for textile machinery.
Products on display will include: washing, bleaching, dyeing, printing, and finishing machinery and
accessories; spinning, weaving, knitting, nonwovens, and make-up machinery and accessories; and
other machinery and accessories. Vendors of dyestuffs and chemicals, testing and recycling
equipment, transport and handling machinery, software, and other goods and services also will be
present. Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Turkey, China and Taiwan, Korea, Belgium and the United
States are among the countries and locales that will take part in the exhibition’s national
pavilions.

Worldwide Support


Support from the New Delhi-based Confederation of Indian Textile Industry (CITI) and its 16
affiliated member associations, as well as from the Milan-based Association of Italian Textile
Machinery Manufacturers, has contributed to the organizers’ outreach efforts to textile
representatives in India and in neighboring countries. In addition, the India Trade Promotion
Organisation has approved the show; and the British Textile Machinery Association; Indo-German
Chamber of Commerce and Industry, New Delhi; Swissmem Textile Machinery Division, Switzerland; and
Textile Machinery Manufacturers and Accessories Manufacturers Association, Turkey, have consulted
with organizers.

IMAG and FDI have promoted the event to potential attendees from India, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh and Pakistan through press conferences, media partners including trade journals and the
daily press, direct mailings, and travel packages tailored to visitors from significant textile
manufacturing hubs in India and abroad. Major companies in the textile industry have included the
show in their exhibition programs, the organizers note. Among the targeted visitor groups are
representatives of textile, spinning, weaving, knitting and dyeing mills; clothing machinery
manufacturers, wholesalers and importers; wholesalers, distributors and retail associations; the
textile machinery industry; trades and crafts; and services, research and education. As of Textile
World’s press time, 206 companies from around the world had expressed interest in exhibiting at
TEXMAC India 2007.

According to organizers, the show will be scheduled biennially and the exhibition space of
future editions may grow.

ATEXCON


CITI’s Asian Textile Conference (ATEXCON) will occur concurrently with TEXMAC on January 18
and 19 at the Hotel InterContinental, New Delhi. The conference’s second edition will build on the
success of the December 2005 event. Inaugural conference attendees – including suppliers and buyers
from India, Bangladesh, China and other Asian countries; European machinery manufacturers and
consultants; and industry representatives from the United States and Europe – gathered to trade
information about trends, prospects and the future of the Asian textile and apparel industry. Fiber
and yarn, technical textiles, technology developments, home textiles, and garments and
international trade were the subjects of business sessions addressing the premiere edition’s theme
“Emerging Trends in Asian Textiles.”

The theme of ATEXCON 2007 will be “Competing Through Productivity Gains.” On the first day,
as part of that theme, attendees will hear speaker presentations and examine case studies about
managing productivity in the textile industry, and productivity and cost competitiveness in the
apparel sector; and will partake in discussions about those topics. A second business session will
concentrate on technology developments, including smart fibers, the future of spinning capacities,
technical textiles, weaving and processing innovations, and smart garments. Asian textile and
apparel corporations also will present their findings and will lead discussions about growth
through value addition during the third session.

On the second day of the conference, capacity building trends and requirements will be the
focus of the fourth session. Attendees will discuss and listen to presentations about investment
trends and financing requirements. The textile and apparel industries in Asia, the United States
and EU; and the trends and prospects of intra-Asian trade flows will be among the topics examined
during the final business session, focusing on international trade.

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For more information about TEXMAC, contact Catherine Schultheiss (international)
49-89-949-22-124; schultheiss@imag.de; or L. Shyamsundar (In India) 91-9811355527; fdi@vsnl.net;
www.texmacfairs.com. For more information about ATEXCON,
contact the Confederation of Indian Textile Industry 91-11-23325012; mail@citiindia.com;
www.atexcon.com.

November/December 2006