The fashion industry has evolved, in recent decades, as a result of innovative developments and technological progress. Customer purchasing behaviour has moved from focusing on ‘wants’ of functional clothing to the ‘needs’ of quality, safety and performance. High-performance clothing is a way of using modern technology to improve the lives of new-age customers.
However, the reality is that there are no mandatory regulations in the global market to control the quality of high-performance textile products and this presents a challenge for manufacturers, suppliers and buyers when making manufacturing and sourcing decisions without the aid of standardised benchmarking. Without mandatory regulations, the businesses are not able to showcase if their products meet the industry’s commercial standards or whether they excel in performance among other similar products in the market.
This is why, in a customer-driven market such as fashion, ensuring that the customers are educated about the quality of high-performance products is a must, so that they understand why they are paying more for the premium performance products.
Intertek, a leading total quality assurance provider to industries worldwide with over 130 years of expertise, supports businesses to capture the growth opportunities in high-performance textile markets.
Intertek has developed an innovative High-Performance Mark programme to help retailers, brands and manufacturers demonstrate the functional properties of apparel, activewear, textiles and footwear by verifying performance attributes through testing and enabling fashion businesses to communicate the benefits to their customers through labelling that bears the High-Performance Mark.
The launch of the Intertek High-Performance Mark Programme meets the needs of trade and customers in establishing standardised quality requirements. The company has created a common language for stakeholders to communicate using graphical tools and a trustworthy standard that can be easily understood with a series of descriptors.
Here is what the High-Performance Mark programme is all about
From wrinkle-free dress shirts and fade-resistant outdoor fabrics, to cooling bed sheets and waterproof hiking boots, consumers are looking for apparel, textiles and footwear they wear or use every day to not only be fashionable, but also to have functional properties that make their lives easier. Intertek helps ensure the claims businesses make about their apparel, textile and footwear products as true and accurate with its High-Performance Mark programme, which ultimately provides confidence to the end-consumer.
The Intertek High-Performance Mark Programme is a verification programme covering the marketing of high-performance features of textile and footwear products. Application of the High-Performance Mark (HP Mark) on a product indicates that the samples tested by Intertek met the requirements established for specific high-performance functionalities as listed in the programme’s requirement table.
Performance descriptors for textiles and apparel
Intertek currently offers verification for 36 functional properties for textiles and apparel and 11 for footwear, including anti-bacterial, breathable, odour-repellent, moisture wicking, shock absorbing, stain release and UV protection, to name a few. The complete list of performance descriptors can be viewed below:
Performance descriptors for footwear
Benefits of the High-Performance Mark
Under the High-Performance Mark Programme, products passing the pre-defined requirements are provided with High-Performance Mark and Trade Dressing, and High-Performance Mark Certificate. Among a number of other benefits of the High-Performance Mark Programme, a few are listed here:
- Differentiate the quality of high-performance textile products with the Intertek High-Performance Mark
- Utilise ‘proof of quality’ labelling so that the companies can charge more for their high-quality products
- Give confidence to consumers or buyers as the products have been verified by a world-leading Total Quality Assurance organisation
- Get simple visuals for consumers to easily understand the products’ high-performance features
- Educate consumers on the value of products with functional performance features
- Enable easy trace-and-track of product performance with identifiable marks and certificates
- Increase the durability of textile and apparel, thus extending product lifecycle and reducing textile waste
Intertek HP Mark Programme can support the differentiation of durable products.
Application of Intertek High-Performance Mark
The High-Performance Mark provides ‘proof of quality labelling’ for the fashion businesses to easily communicate with their customers the verified functional properties of products with a trace-and-track QR code linking to identifiable marks and certificates on High-Performance Mark Directory. As per Intertek, one can apply the HP Mark on clothing and footwear tags, websites, mobile apps, videos, brochures, and look books, etc., for winning customers’ confidence and trust through third-party verification from Intertek.
