Are we going to innovate our way out of this recession—all the way out of it—with chastened lenders hoarding funds and ducking regulation, and government and big business pontificating, advising, nodding sagely and forming blue-ribbon commissions? It brings to mind, painfully, the years that I worked as an Information Officer for the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA), which operated with government-appointed top management (sometimes hired from our major utility companies), nearly 700 employees around the state (almost all of them against pollution), an antiquated computer system filled with often-incompatible data, and the involvement of several large labor unions.

Watching the progression of an idea around that agency became a source of amusement, once it stopped being a source of pain. If I’d sent around an e-mail to everyone announcing that I had discovered a cure for cancer, I’d have received 400 replies directing me to the Minnesota Department of Health, and 200 responses saying “I don’t have cancer; please remove me from your mailing list.”

In his book “A Short History of Nearly Everything,” Bill Bryson references the five stages of innovation:

1. People deny that the innovation is required.
2. People deny that the innovation is effective.
3. People deny that the innovation is important.
4. People deny that the innovation will justify the effort required to adopt it.
5. People accept and adopt the innovation, enjoy its benefits, attribute it to people other than the innovator, and deny the existence of stages 1 through 4.

When I left the MPCA, I joined IFAI and was introduced to the specialty fabrics industry. In some respects, I’m still trying to figure out how a 70-person trade association can be more complicated than a 700-person state agency. I have seen that, as in any industry, there is resistance to change, and to accepting the fact that sometimes small changes aren’t enough. But I’ve also seen a lot of small businesses treating innovation as a process, rather than a product, and engineering change after listening to the customer, rather than before.

The Industrial Fabrics Foundation’s (IFF) first-ever Innovation Award program, designed both to recognize the importance of innovation to the specialty fabrics industry and to inspire new business opportunities and partnerships, garnered seven entries this year. IFF director Beth Hungiville (blhungiville@ifai.com) says that next year, the organization may change the requirement that a product submitted must be commercially available, or add a new category for products or processes that have been developed but are still seeking commercial distribution. This year’s winners will be announced at IFAI Expo Americas 2010 in Orlando this October.

Keep thinking.

The oil is destroying habitat, wildlife, lifestyles and livings at an astounding rate, yet the court feels that the deepwater drilling moratorium might harm the local (and not so local, I’ll wager) economy. And here I thought it was mostly politicians (and, possibly, beauticians) that subscribed to the “it didn’t work, so let’s do it some more” philosophy.

When I think about this disaster (and Katrina, and Haiti), it has become such an overwhelming event that all I seem to be able to do is fervently hope that BP will hire a competent flack and get their top executives off the public airwaves. (“I want my life back”? The “small” people? Just how long has it been since these people have had to be careful about what they say?) I visited www.whatshouldbpdo.com to see what creative ideas the small people are suggesting on how to stop the leak, but I don’t really have the engineering background to know if some of the suggested remedies could possibly work. How to stop the leak is a problem without a solution, so far. But how to remediate the effects of the leak is a problem that has hundreds of solutions—and a whole bunch of them are being supplied by the specialty fabrics industry.

All seven of IFAI’s publications (you’re reading the flagship right now, of course) are carrying stories, product developments and news items on how textiles and textile products are being used to clean up the oil. If you do a universal search on “oil spill” on this site, you’ll start to see how our industry (and others) are gearing up to respond. But more immediate and extensive coverage is being compiled on the home page of the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI), detailing how IFAI members are responding to the spill. Both manufacturers of materials and manufacturers of end products are included, as well as information on new technologies being developed, and a section on how you can help with relief efforts, ranging from listing your company as a supplier to submitting a white paper to the U.S. Coast Guard.

This might be one instance in which “just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should” is 100 percent in error. As for BP’s efforts to solve the hole problem: If the company couldn’t operate the platform sustainably in the first place, why are we relying upon them for a solution?

There have been other setbacks, of course. The World Wide Web, digital publishing and the more recent phenomena of social media networking and marketing have been gnawing away at print publications for some time. Carr told us, however, that these are just adding new routes to consumers, and creating real, actual communities of interest, with two-way communication with our audiences. But as information burgeons electronically, it will be much more critical to ensure what the electronic wizards are calling "content curation," and what magazine editors have always called ... editing. Quality still matters, and we still have to make sure that we're creating it, and that people can find it. For our readers, that imperative is the same; according to Carr, that means "work on what's working."

He cautioned, however, that we survivors must be willing to innovate to keep going, and use the new technologies to do what we do best.

Probably everyone is pleased enough to say goodbye to fiscal year 2009, including the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI). But outreach here continues, and is accelerating. Geosynthetic Materials Association (GMA) managing director Andrew Aho recently told us that the U.S. EPA has announced a notice of proposed rulemaking that will require lining of coal ash containment sites. GMA has been advocating for such a regulation, and successfully lobbied members of Congress to support it. When adopted, these new regulations will have a tremendous impact on the geosynthetic materials market in the U.S.

Next March, we'll hold the first-ever IFAI Expo Asia at the new Marina Bay Sands Hotel and Exhibition Centre in Singapore. Current trade shows in India and China focus almost exclusively on the disposable nonwoven industry. IFAI Expo Asia 2011 will become the first major event in the region that specifically targets as visitors the end-product fabricators who use all types of materials-woven, nonwoven, knit and composite textiles.

It's a risk, true--but it's also an opportunity to build another audience, and now's the time.

June 2010 is the start of our 2011 fiscal year for the Specialty Fabrics Review. I'm hoping for more of that two-way communication with you this year, through whichever method of communication you prefer. As for me, I'm hoping to do a little judicious tweeting and blogging at IFAI Expo Americas this October, if I can convince our worthy Webmistress to trust me with the keys. Wine may be mentioned, but only in passing. See you there.

Given those predilections, it's only natural that I've lately been thinking of our country's, and our planet's, long-term economic and environmental circumstances in terms of Isaac Asimov's "psychohistory," a fictional science in his "Foundation" universe that combined history, psychology and mathematical statistics to predict the behavior of very large populations of people. Asimov's fictional character Hari Seldon established three rules for psychohistory:

1. The population under scrutiny must be unaware of the existence of psychohistory;
2. The time periods dealt with are generational, not annual;
3. The population must be in the billions to have statistical probability for psychohistorical calculations.

There are, certainly, people and organizations who are pursuing research that bears a distinct resemblance to, if it is not actually based on, psychohistory. In a recent PBS interview, Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman commented: "I don't know how many of your viewers read science fiction, but there's a very old series by Isaac Asimov-the Foundation novels-in which the social scientists who understand the true dynamics save civilization. That's what I wanted to be; it doesn't exist, but economics is as close as you can get, so as a teenager I really got into it."

Isaac Asimov also wrote a series of stories and novels about robots, initially building around another set of three rules (and possible ways to circumvent them):

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I haven't yet worked out exactly how to work psychohistory into our current world crises, and whether this global recession would constitute a Seldon Crisis. I'm working on it. But as far as the three rules of robotics go, I just thought of a set of rules which might apply to individual businesses and short periods of time.

First Law: A business may not injure a society, or, through inaction, allow a society to come to harm.

Second Law: A business must obey any orders given to it by its government, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

Third Law: a business must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

The permutations here are also virtually endless, and I'm going to belabor them considerably in future blogs. I may find a way to cover reality TV and politics, too.

In the June, 2010 issue "Beginnings," I picked up a "Personal Relations Quiz" from the January, 1945 issue of The National Canvas Goods Manufacturers Review. I didn't have room for the answers on that page, so I sent our avid readers here. (If you aren't a subscriber to the Review, you can probably figure out the questions from the answers. If not, wrest a copy of the June Review from a friend, or send me an e-mail.)

This is one of those "the more things change" type of stories ... although I do note that the style then was to spell "employee" with one "e," oddly enough. Despite the basic HR techniques described, however, I wonder if all of this is still really true in our current economic climate. Is anything more important than money right now?

And if you're the manager of a group of people terrified of losing their jobs, are you treating them as though they have one "e," or two?

Personal Relations Quiz: Answers

1. Employes sometimes object to expensive service emblems because they feel they might better have the money the company has spent for such items.

2. Strangely enough, authorities have found that workers really desire satisfaction from their job more than they do money or anything else. It is the striving for satisfaction that will make a man work overtime and cheerfully give his all for the company.

3. Workers are prone to dislike complicated wage payment plans because they cannot figure out in advance how much money they are actually entitled to. Hence, they are never quite sure whether or not they are being cheated or overpaid. Too, if they cannot understand on what basis they are being paid, they are apt, on general principles, to come to distrust the company-and thus a bad psychological setup is apt to arise.

4. The "palsy-walsy" technique may work well in the small plant, but in the large plant with hundreds of employes to deal with it quite often may lose its effect. Hence, the small plant owner or manager who uses this technique exclusively must keep an eye to the future, else his plant outgrow his technique.

5. In general, superior effort or workmanship should always be given public recognition. For this the satisfaction gained is magnified a hundred fold.

6. A "job analysis" is an analysis made of a given position, and is generally used by the personnel department as an aid in hiring suitable individuals for the certain job. If the idiosyncrasies of the job are set down, it is obviously thus easier to hire an individual with the proper qualifications to fill that job.

7. When a workman is "psychologically inefficient," he is then somehow mentally not in tune with his job. Thus, in the case of the man habitually late due to this cause, we may say that his attitude may have been due to a variety of subcauses. For instance, he may feel that he is not capable of carrying on his job properly. He may not like his job. His job may be too easy, too uninteresting for a man of his intelligence ... Any of these items might be a cause for habitual lateness!

8. It is bad policy ever to reprimand an employe in front of his fellows. This is true primarily because a public reprimand tends to injure the pride. Hence, a man who receives a bawling out in front of his friends, may say and do things-talk back, and so on-that he would never say or do if "scolded" privately.

9. In such an instance the excuse about being drafted would be reasonable. No matter how steady one's nerves, the prospect of being drafted usually has a more or less adverse effect on the nerves-tends to make one a bit squeamish. And any person in such a frame of mind would more than likely suffer from decreased production, simply because he would be incapable of giving his full attention to his job.

10. Apparently Mr. Sloan means that he phrases his orders in the form of requests. Thus, instead of giving direct commands-which all of us find more or less unpleasant to follow-he, to the contrary, asks his employes to carry out his desires.

*For the questions to these answers, read "Beginnings" in the June issue of Specialty Fabrics Review magazine.

I found this inspiring to write about, but first needed to find a suitable quotation for the top of this page. I found a good one, but there were many more, so I thought I'd use them all in an imagined conversation among a decidedly eclectic group, which you might visualize split-screened on CNN and moderated by me as the host. I rarely watch an entire television show, so we join it in process.

Host: Welcome back. We're talking about the importance of innovation in industry. To follow up on your point, John, it's hard to be creative, isn't it, when daily problems can be overwhelming?

Gardner: We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.

Hock: Actually, the problem is never how to get new, innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out. ... Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.

Host: So it's more of a passive activity?

Camus: Great ideas come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear amid the uproar of empires and nations a faint flutter of wings; the gentle stirring of life and hope.

London: You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. (Everyone, except Camus, laughs.)

Edison: To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. (Another laugh. Camus smiles, at least.)

Host: We've all been understandably preoccupied with rescuing the bottom line.

Muzyka: A focus on cost-cutting and efficiency has helped many organizations weather the downturn, but this approach will ultimately render them obsolete. Only the constant pursuit of innovation can ensure long-term success.

Host: That's a little frightening, though, isn't it, and carries risks.

Cage: I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of old ones.

Host: But mistakes happen ...

Pearce: To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong.

Host: Well, we'd all like a crystal ball for minimizing risks, wouldn't we, but foregoing that, what?

Kay: The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Host: On that note, we'll wrap it up for today. Thanks to our guests for their thought-provoking ideas. Let's hope our viewers take up the challenge and enter the competition. Be sure to visit indfabfnd.com for information, or contact Beth Hungiville at +1 651 225 6545, or blhungiville@ifai.com. But do enter-and good luck!

(The credits roll)

Janet Preus is the editor of Specialty Fabrics Review.

Tonight’s guests were avant-garde composer, John Cage; Nobel prize-winning author, Albert Camus; inventor, Thomas Edison; statesman and author, John W. Gardner; the founder of Visa, Dee Hock; computer scientist, Alan Kay; author, Jack London; Daniel Muzyka, Dean of the Sauder School of Business; and Joseph Chilton Pearce, author.

It isn't that I actually thought that applying pressure to the coal would eventually turn it into diamonds, although it did make a nice conversation piece when people came to visit. Mostly, I just felt that there should be something useful to do with it, someday.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations declared 2009 the International Year of Natural Fibers, and sponsored a year-long series of events seeking to raise awareness of the benefits of natural fibers over synthetic and petroleum-based textiles, which are not viewed as sustainable. But for more than a decade, researchers and innovative businesses have been developing incredible new fibers, fiber treatments and fabrics from abundant and renewable local resources:

> The University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, is using hagfish slime fibers to develop a prototype composite for use in products such as textiles, biomedical and electronic devices, tissue engineering and biosensors.

> NatureWorks LLC, Minneapolis, Minn., makes Ingeo^TM plant-based fibers that are being used for products ranging from floor mats for the Toyota Prius to carpeting, sustainable fashions, cups, plates and cutlery used at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.

> A natural biopolymer that strengthens the shells of crustaceans can be combined with fragrant oils to produce odor-repellent, stain-resistant and antimicrobial automotive interiors, according to researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology.

> The Philippine Textile Research Institute has discovered how to convert the hard, coarse fibers of indigenous plants into soft spun yarns, which potentially can be blended with polyester, cotton or silk for apparel, home textiles and industrial use.

> Silk crepe kimonos made with Teijin's eco-friendly BIOFRONT^TM bioplastic will be worn by Japanese restaurant staff at the Japan Industry Pavilion at the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, China.

> At the recent ATNT-2009 conference in India, the Kumaraguru College of Technology presented results on the development of composite fibers using chicken feather fibers.

The advantages are not only ecological but economical, as textile industries around the world start finding industrial applications using local resources and byproducts to help replace the loss of manufacturing caused by inexpensive imports. The combination of high-tech processes and abundant, replaceable and natural resources is already having major impacts on the specialty fabrics industry.

And as far as my basement goes, I can wait for someone to come up with some fabulous fabric that is made from coal, with perhaps the addition of some of the centipedes populating the surroundings. The wine cellar, however, already has a target market.

The rush to publish, a low barrier to entry, and new handheld devices (iPad, anyone?) makes posting quick notes on sites like Twitter and Facebook extremely tempting for people who are trying to break news—and probably works great if your news is about your lunch, your current relationship, your dog, your laundry, Lady GaGa, or tomorrow’s lunch.

Last week, I attended a Publishers Roundtable discussion about social media marketing for publications, and heard great things about how well it works for consumer magazines. But as another editor and I (oddly enough, the majority of the attendees were editors, not publishers; the publishers were the ones checking their e-mail on their phones during the discussion) walked out into the rain, we both had the same question—are these platforms really of use to a publication with technical subject matter and a very specific, and very busy, target audience?

A recent membership survey done by IFAI indicated that almost three-fourths of survey respondents are not using social media marketing in promoting their products and services. Yet technically savvy customers are likely to be using it more and more to research new products. In “Look, listen, leap” in the March 2010 issue of Specialty Fabrics Review, author Linda Kaun comments: “Marketers simply do not control their one-way message any more. Social media pulls your audience to you with informative content that you publish and share online, while networking and building an interactive community around your brand. The key words are ‘interactive’ and ‘community.’ It’s about building relationships with people.”

Content is key, but followed closely by convenience. I just received news (via e-mail) from Glen Raven Custom Fabrics LLC announcing that it has launched a mobile version of its popular Sunbrella® fabrics website ... “because you never know when the urge to redecorate will strike.” From a handheld device, users will be able to search a fabrics library and find the nearest Sunbrella resource, care and cleaning tips and warranty information from www.sunbrella.mobi. That sort of instant connection probably does not make a sample book obsolete when trying to sell a customer on a custom fabric product—but it could certainly give the impression of an absolutely up-to-date supplier of even a very traditional product or service.

“Sunbrella Mobile is another way in which we are responding to how people want to receive information today,” says Gina Wicker, design and creative director for Sunbrella Fabrics.

So far, I am tweeting neither personally nor professionally—140 characters? Please. That doesn’t get me beyond the subject line. But I can envision myself nudging aside our webmistress at IFAI Expo Americas this fall to send regular updates about the latest information, the coolest products, the nearest wines.

Content is key.

Webmistress note: Follow SpecialtyFabricsReview.com on Twitter and Facebook!

Thinking about a huge and increasingly profitable industry as the biggest problem for all our other industries gives me a headache, frankly. But yesterday’s discussions were also illustrative of how we’re all approaching business these days—by being encouraged (or forced) to change our behavior.

Stop smoking. Stop drinking. Stop eating. Start exercising. Start sleeping. And start shopping around for the best drug prices. Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about trusting my heart rate to a drug that sells for $4 a month at one place and $50 a month at another. After all, in the specialty fabrics industry, buying or selling only on price is seen as the road to ultimate ruin. But the most telling point was their emphasis on re-examining personal and professional habits, and how much these incremental changes can affect your health, your healthcare costs, and your employer’s healthcare costs.

The need for continued innovation is clear. But there’s another path: the need to audit, redesign and reinvent every aspect of our operations. We’ve run a lot of articles over the last two years about how to do this effectively. (And if you want to find them, visit www.specialtyfabricsreview.com and use the “search all IFAI” box to see what all seven IFAI magazines have had to say on the subject.)

Also discussed at this morning’s meeting was a recent IFAI membership questionnaire, indicating that fully 70 percent of respondents indicated that they do not understand or use social media marketing—despite the fact that every marketing expert on earth (I can’t speak for other planets) tells us that it will define the new consumer. Companies are going back to the beginning on their marketing plans to accommodate these new communication strategies, and even the hands-on manufacturing of custom fabric products is going to have to adapt to them. On page 51 of this issue, Linda Kaun provides some basics on how to begin a social media marketing program that could actually do your company some good. And on page 36, “Meet the press” gives you some techniques for getting free publicity from the media—no matter how they deliver it to their readers.

IFAI and Specialty Fabrics Review are moving into more interactive electronic communication with our consumers as well. You can now submit entries to the annual International Achievement Awards at www.ifaipublications.com/iaasubmit. Right now, companies are entering their 2010 Review Buyer’s Guide information online (remember: the deadline is March 25).

But if my health insurance provider tells me that wine cellar ownership is going to double my HSA deductible … well, so be it. Not all current behaviors are undesirable.

For those blessed with less wildly variable climates, potholes are caused by the freeze-thaw cycle allowing water to seep between cracks and underneath pavements, ultimately causing sizeable chunks of asphalt to pop out of the roadway, leaving holes that can make a 1995 Saturn fear for its hubcaps on a daily basis. Turning to specialty fabrics for a solution—as always—I went to www.geosyntheticsmagazine.com and searched the magazine’s archives for “pavement repair.”

Turns out there are quite a number of geosynthetic solutions for both constructing and repairing roadways. The situation can be summed up by analyses in Geosynthetics magazine, reporting on a comprehensive study of pavement repair materials and methods: “The pavement assessments aren’t the only thing that’s new. The study is also the first to draw broad-ranging conclusions about the economic benefit of paving fabric interlayers. In the past, some DOTs and other local entities have chosen not to utilize paving fabrics, viewing them as an unnecessary extra cost. However, this study shows that incorporating a paving fabric interlayer is always a cost-competitive repair strategy. On a road in a typical “needs repair” condition, the paving fabric repair strategy clearly gives the most bang for the construction buck.” (The survey was sponsored by Propex Fabrics, TC Mirafi, SI Geosolutions and Nevown (now TNS Advanced Technologies), as a special project under the Geosynthetic Materials Association.)

Maybe now’s the time for a flurry of technically savvy and economically forceful letters to the editor of the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune, to help turn the infrastructure funding discussion away from partisan politics and toward finding more efficient ways to keep Minnesota’s population from completely losing its axles.

That is not to say, of course, that their concerns are equivalent in quality as well as in quantity. For most people in the workforce today, losing a job is a survival issue. For most businesses, laying off employees is a profit issue. While it is usually true that a business that makes no profits will not survive, it is not true that a business that makes lower profits won't. Personally, I can support our capitalist oligarchy only so far. That being said, it's rarely an either-or situation. And many businesses persist in regarding salaries as expenditures, rather than as investments.

We've written about this issue quite often in the Review over the last couple of years (for a quick sampling of published articles, just leap to the top of this page and type the word "workforce" into the search engine). In the article "Smooth operators" in our January issue, Globe Canvas Products' Kevin Kelly says "The most important consideration is to be willing to throw away the way you are doing things now." He was referring to operational issues specifically, but it's a mindset that should be especially critical when dealing with staffing issues, which do link directly to profit issues, if sometimes in unexpected ways.

A few months ago I was reading an interview with Clint Greenleaf, CEO of the Greenleaf Book Group, about "how to keep your staff and your bottom line intact." With about 30 full-time employees, he regards even one layoff as unacceptable. "Cutting one person from the team is losing one invaluable resource that helps make this entire company tick," he said. "In the short term, it's hurting morale and lowering the productivity of a department. In the long run it means the entire company's time and money is spent trying to make up for the loss-redistributing tasks and overburdening departments, struggling to make up the slack, dealing with the paperwork, and eventually putting additional man-hours toward rehiring and retraining. And, of course, the toll layoffs take on the economy is tremendous."

Greenleaf's solution: he asked his employees to institute what he calls the "lay-on," which essentially means putting in one voluntary extra hour per day at work. He explains it as "One extra hour to be used in the most advantageous way possible; finishing up projects, having a meeting with a client or vendor, assisting a co-worker, getting hands dirty working in another department. Even cleaning a desk or organizing files, if it helps improve efficiency." The system has worked for his company, resulting in greater productivity, increased profits and more reserves for tough times.

One definition of insanity is doing the same things repeatedly but expecting different results.

Not that doing things differently can't give you the same results-there are weeks when I buy Powerball tickets and weeks when I don't, and both techniques have ultimately resulted in my not having the money to start a winery and a competitive mass transit system for Minneapolis.

But I'd like to hear from companies in the specialty fabrics industry that have found creative ways to retain and retrain their employees to help create a jobfull recovery.

In February, many of you will be receiving an e-mail about the 2010 Review Buyer’s Guide. Because we’re making some changes this year, I’m going to put my journalistic training to hard use here and answer all your questions in advance:

What: the Specialty Fabrics Review Buyer’s Guide is a comprehensive annual resource of industry products and suppliers. It’s our biggest print issue, and our most-visited resource on www.specialtyfabricsreview.com as well. (Although I am determined to surpass it with my blog.)

Why: for suppliers, it gets your product information to thousands of potential customers, all year long. For manufacturers, it puts thousands of industry products at your fingertips, both in print and online.

When: an e-mail to potential participants will be sent in mid-February. Deadline for submitting information is March 25th. And we mean it.

Where: The Buyer’s Guide will be published in May, 2010, and posted online as well as mailed to all Review readers. My call to Steve Jobs about also adding it to all new iPads hasn’t been answered yet, but the world will definitely have access.

Who: as in previous years, IFAI members and advertisers in that issue (members and nonmembers) are eligible to be included. And now, the big one …

How: the e-mail this month will provide both instructions and a login ID for participants to access the buyer’s guide website. Eligible companies will be able to update contact information and select product listings online.

That’s right—we’ll be saving trees, time and trouble because we will not mail you forms and instructions. And the information you submit will be uploaded directly to our database, ensuring that what you enter will be what we print.

This year’s online conversation will also allow you to: view and update your information in all seven IFAI buyer’s guides as needed; change your information at any time before that publication’s posted deadline; and update your membership directory information as well. Eligibility requirements and product categories differ for each publication, so you will need to enter information for each one that’s relevant to your business. But once you’re done, you’re done for the year; and you can go back to reading my blog and posting insightful responses.

Have keyboard, will travel.

“Don’t assume a return to normal,” said Harvard Business School professor John Quelch in an article entitled “Marketing After the Recession.” “The longer and deeper the recession, the more likely consumers will adjust their attitudes and behaviors permanently. Their coping mechanisms may become ingrained and define a new normal. In addition, the competitive landscape will have changed … Listen closely to your customers and revise your market segmentation assumptions.”

I’m not buying any of it.

Who more than a Boomer homeowner with a crumbling infrastructure is the target market for many manufacturers these days? My hobby of graceful degradation can only go so far. This morning, I sent a rueful and marginally self-indulgent e-mail to a friend bemoaning the situation that despite the inescapable fact that my house has an upstairs bathroom in increasingly urgent need of attention from plumbers and electricians, and that it has been for the entire period of this recession, my first remedial outreach effort in 2010 was to order a case of Rioja from Grove Street Wine Brokers in Healdsburg, California, immediately followed by the purchase of a Powerball ticket at a nearby gas station..

Happily enough, my friend responded by saying: “Gas stations have restrooms if you need one. But they don’t have wine. I think your priorities are in order.”

My guess is that consumers will change their basic buying habits for just about as long as major financial institutions will follow President Obama’s mandate to pay taxpayers back for their billions in bailout money. Certainly there are long-term trends in consumer behavior, but I doubt that the recession itself will create any. Emphasizing the real value of the products and services you offer will still be the best marketing strategy.

In our March issue of Specialty Fabrics Review magazine, we’ve got an article scheduled on how to get media attention to help your promote your products to your customers. In the April issue, there will be an article on how to choose the right promotional tools for your marketing messages. Consumers are definitely using new ways to get product information—but their motivations to buy, and to choose one product over another, change much more slowly.

Once that case of wine arrives, the plumber’s next on my list.

Following up on my topic of the importance of creativity in employees and innovation in business (“It’s not cheating if you win”), which I probably wouldn’t need to do if our webmistress would stop telling me that my blogs are too long, I’ve been doing more research on what both employers and employees will be seeking from each other in 2010, as the economy slogs back from recession.

What makes an ideal employee? Desired traits seem to fall into four general categories: competencies/skills, values, attitude and potential (which might be where that undervalued trait of creativity falls). Using a compellingly meteorological example, if asked to maintain a snow- and ice-free parking lot for the business, the ideal employee might respond: “I can drive a snowplow, I love spreading chemicals and, in fact, just came up with a new state-of-the-art dispenser last night while I was fooling around in my basement. I regard every snowflake as a personal affront.” If this person is normally employed in the mailroom, you might want to promote her to Facilities Manager immediately, and make sure she has a regular supply of doughnuts. (And not just some stale SuperAmerica cake doughnuts dusted with powdered sugar. Revolutions have started over less.)

Treat your job as though it’s your own business.

On the management side, there’s also a host of desirable attributes: professionalism/knowledge, flexibility, fairness, consistency. A good boss needs to be able to learn as well as teach, support the employees, and be focused on the mission, not just the money. Oddly enough, I didn’t find any list of desirable management traits that included creativity.

Would your employees hire you?

Recent nationwide surveys are showing that however happy people are to still have jobs, only 45 percent of respondents actually liked their jobs—the lowest percentage in 22 years. That could be at least partially a response to the situation many people find themselves in now, as benefits are cut and workloads increase. But if you want to retain your best employees and ensure that soft landing as the economy slowly recovers in 2010, you’d better find some creative ways to keep them happy. Treating employees as an expenditure rather than a resource is a good way to encourage another employer to invest in them.

Editor’s note: If you’ve received an e-mail from me recently and are checking to see what the answer is to the question my signature line poses (If a chicken and a half can lay an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs can nine chickens lay in nine days?), the answer is: 54. Trust me.

Or, to be more accurate, it’s one Current Thing. Specialty Fabrics Review will be covering a variety of online marketing tools for manufacturers in the coming months: RSS, social bookmarking, social media news releases, podcasting, blogs, effective websites. But as 2009 comes to a very welcome end and we all start preparing to push this economic recovery in 2010, every aspect of any business is getting a thorough examination from management: what do we do best, and how can we do it better? Where do we cut, and where do we invest? How do we keep an ongoing dialogue with customers?

In this issue, in addition to our lead feature about how photovoltaics is leading to new opportunities to promote awnings and canopies to customers, we’re also highlighting different business strategies for growth (“In-house or out: play to your strengths,” page 38) and “Smooth operators” on page 44, focusing on finding efficiencies in labor, equipment and operations. You’ve stayed in business throughout 2009, so you must be doing something right—but because something has worked in the past is no guarantee for the future. As Globe Canvas’ Kevin Kelly says, “The most important consideration is to be willing to throw away the way you are doing things now.”

It’s clear that it’s not only electronic conversations that need to be re-started to kick-start 2010. But it’s also clear that many specialty fabrics manufacturers need to make fast progress in this area to stay current with the way that customers now research products and suppliers. Any business plan for 2010 should have website development and social media marketing as an important component.

IFAI is working to update its long-term procedures as well, trying to increase both efficiency and effectiveness, for our members and customers and for ourselves. All seven IFAI publications now have completely redesigned websites, and soon you’ll be able to do a single search across all of them to find the information and sources you need. One major change we have just made: the 2010 Review Buyer’s Guide forms will not be mailed to you in January. (How’s that for progress?)

Instead, you will receive an e-mail giving you instructions on how to log in to your directory information online; and while you’re there, you will have the opportunity to input information on all seven IFAI magazine directories and the 2010 membership directory in one visit, if you’re eligible to do so. And you’ll be able to update that information right up until the data is downloaded for publication.

Let the conversations begin.

Two day-long sessions I remember with particular fondness. One was focused on strategic decision-making, and broke us into teams of administrative staff, creative staff and management as they sketched that morning’s scenario: a plane crash in the desert, a list of resources and supplies, and an assignment to do what we needed to do, with what we had, to survive. The creative team, spurred perhaps by my foggy childhood recollections of the television show “Sky King,” immediately searched the (dead) pilot’s jacket pockets for candy bars, draped the parachutes over the plane’s wing for shade, applied the vodka to our skin to cool ourselves, and waited for rescue. We survived. The management team, spurred by the need for action, hiked off determinedly into the desert, and perished. There was great glee on the fourth floor of Lakewood Publications the next day, which may or may not have been the result anticipated by the consultant, or the management.

A second session focused on creativity, and gave us a sheet of paper and the instructions to create an airplane that would travel the greatest distance. Some folded the paper into intricate aerodynamic folds; some crumpled it into a tight ball and tossed it as hard as they could. A few of us editors conferred for a while, then took our unfolded sheets of paper up to the beginning line and carried them a few feet beyond where the other entries had landed. When asked by the facilitator what we were doing, we replied “we gave ours engines.”*

This all came back to me as I was reading a synopsis of “The Edge Report: A Preview of the Post-Recession Job Market,” a publication based on an annual survey conducted by Robert Half Intl. and CareerBuilder. Among the questions asked of employers was: “Aside from having the basic job qualifications, which of the following characteristics best describe the ideal new hire?” The answers: A multitasker who thrives on a variety of projects (36%); a go-getter who takes initiative (31%); a creative thinker who solves problems (21%); followed by “other” (7%) and “don’t know” (5%). The report posits that managers have new appreciation of the value of employees who can take on multiple responsibilities during lean times, and also help companies grow as the economy recovers.

Of course, those results also put “go-getters” ahead of “creative thinkers”—and maybe are one indication that those respondents are risking another trek into the desert. Does this mean that the answer is for all businesses to hire more editors? No; well, yes, but what we really seem to need is a system of employment that balances the needs and expectations of management with those of their workforce, while creating a workplace that fosters innovation—something that the experts are telling us we’re losing.

*We were declared the winners of this exercise but became objects of disgust to our co-workers for at least a month, despite liberal applications of chocolate.

That message is clearly congruent with the “how to survive the recession” advice so many business experts expound. Don’t cut your prices. Don’t cut the quality of your products. Don’t lay off valuable employees. Don’t stop innovating. Don’t stop developing new products. Don’t cut back on technology. Don’t stop taking risks. Don’t retreat inside the moat. Don’t cut expenses so much that you derail your ability to capitalize on new opportunities. And don’t stop marketing your products and reaching out to customers.

For my own part, I’ve spent far too much time in the last couple of years dealing with vendors that were obviously—and mostly quite unapologetically—lowering their standards of service, or timeliness, or reliability, or product quality, and using a tight economy as justification for it, when they bothered to justify it at all. It’s as though I, in the happy belief that most of my friends and relatives are indiscriminate idiots, invited them to a party, opened a bottle or two of a nice, spicy, robust Rhone to start the evening, and then switched to some pale, pink, fizzy plonk at some point in the evening when I figured they’d no longer notice. And then expressed polite disbelief when they all called me the next morning to complain about persistent headaches and fuzzy tongues.

In the article entitled “How to prepare for a natural disaster,” author Bill Lynott advises: Safeguard your most important asset. Your list of satisfied customers is the foundation for the continued health of your business.

One investment you should never stop making is in maintaining customer relationships. Yes, it’s critical to keep reaching out to prospective customers during tough economic times—because those times will pass, as our financial consultant repeatedly reminded us, and also because even during those times, there are always people (and businesses) doing extremely well. It’s hard to imagine an economy so tough that markets no longer exist. Markets aren’t nearly as volatile as customers. Yet many businesses seem to fall into the trap of thinking that “there are always more customers where those came from” when business is good or “nobody’s buying anyway” when business is bad.

Customer service doesn’t consist of a follow-up call after a job is done. It’s an ongoing process, and starts with research in order to verify current knowledge and future projections of consumer expectations. Do you know what your customers really want, or do you just assume that you do?

“Value” is always a variable.

The Wagner Companies has been in the metal business since 1850, manufacturing handrail fittings and metal products for architectural and industrial applications. The company first began producing full-size and table-top Festivus Poles® in 2005, and has since sold more than 5,000 of them. “Festivus in a Box” includes a 7/8-inch diameter, 8.5-inch long aluminum mini Festivus Pole with collapsible base, six Festivus post cards, an “Airing of Grievances” form and a copy of Allen Salkin’s book, “Festivus, The Holiday for the Rest of Us.”

I can’t say from personal experience whether The Wagner Companies’ internal operations and culture are congruent with this lighthearted product and humorous press release, but reading about it certainly brightened a cold, grey, chocolateless Friday afternoon in Roseville, Minnesota. I suspect that this is one organization without a morale problem—and with the creativity and flexibility needed to weather any number of recessions.

What is now the Industrial Fabrics Association International (IFAI) began operations in 1912, so we’re veritable youngsters compared to The Wagner Companies; but we’ve also weathered a lot of economic upheavals. No, I haven’t been here for all of them. But I may be adding a Festivus kit to our post-recessionary revels this holiday season.

Click here to read part 1 of this series

Click here to read part 2 of this series

As an assistant editor for Lakewood Publications, my first job in magazine publishing, I typed my copy onto special layout sheets, sent once a week to a small press operator nearby, who returned long paper galleys for us to proofread and paste up. During deadline crunches, we sometimes waited on the corner of 8th and Hennepin in downtown Minneapolis for our typesetter’s battered green pickup; he’d slow down and hand us the galleys through the window. During one particularly stressful issue, he also brought us a pizza. But when that first Apple II showed up, “floppy” took on a whole new meaning.

As senior editor of Specialty Fabrics Review, I now work on a docked and networked laptop PC, producing not only a monthly magazine but helping with a newly interactive website (www.specialtyfabricsreview.com), with daily news updates, searchable content archived not only by issue but by market, and even a weekly blog (well, almost) from “Miss Management,” who frankly deserves a much wider audience than she’s getting. Devoted as I am to print publishing, there is more than one way to produce a magazine.

Most industries, including specialty fabrics, have something similar happening as technology seems to outpace tradition. In “Resilience through innovation” on page 45 of this issue, a report on IFAI Expo 2009, you’ll find information on e-textiles, fabrics that protect, fabrics that communicate, fabrics that heal themselves and help to heal us, fabrics that generate power, fabrics that change color, fabrics that are recycled and recyclable: today’s materials and tomorrow’s opportunities. You’ll also find reports on on current market trends and growth industries, such as shade structures and wide-format graphics. A third major theme at the show focused on operational excellence—the same kinds of best business practices we’ve been hearing about for years, updated for a new fiscal and physical climate.

The message is quality, and value. IFAI Expo attendees can put together their own educational programs and show floor visits to create their own custom blend of high-tech materials and traditional products, or traditional materials in high-tech markets.

Specialty Fabrics Review creates an editorial calendar each year to present balanced—and useful—coverage of the entire specialty fabrics industry. You may be in business in only a few of the markets we cover each month, but there’s something to learn from every market. In print, you read what we’ve selected, from everyone’s input. Online, you can search the current issue, back issues and all archived material, so if you’re focused on a particular market, product, process or company, you can select just the content you need.

And bringing a pizza with you when you deliver the end results to your customer is still a fine idea.

(Of course, there’s at least one occasion each winter in which the temperature in Embarrass, Minnesota, reaches some absurdly subzero reading and news stations all over the country show people throwing water into the air and gleefully watching it freeze before it hits the ground. Most of us are quite proud of our state’s reputation for cold and snow, but we have yet to convince the rest of the country that their constant whining about the weather is contributing to the wimpification of America.)

Despite all of that annual identity angst, however, there’s also a certain perception that people in Minnesota are steady, polite, practical and effective in that just-under-the-radar style, much the same way that politics in Minnesota are perceived to have a noisy process but usually a reliably centrist if slightly liberal product. It can work to our advantage: Looking at the remarkable excesses on the edges of this country, why wouldn’t people choose the quietly effective middle for their next venture?

I figure there’s probably an economic lesson buried in all of this somewhere. Smaller businesses, like most of those manufacturing specialty fabric products to order, probably can’t be top-of-mind in public perception either, especially because they most probably produce many different kinds of products, and expend so much attention and effort doing so that they have little time left for marketing. But a national news story about an out-of-control motorized easy chair could be an ideal vehicle for an upholstery shop to produce an offbeat but sensible campaign to convince local residents to upgrade.

On the east coast, some energetic and over-eager entrepreneur will immediately open a showroom filled with motorized loungers. On the west coast, an overdressed enigmatic ex-surfer will fill a parking lot with loungers using see-through fabrics mounted on pontoons.

In Minnesota, we’ll just reupholster with durable, attractive fabrics, and limit mobile furniture to the state capitol, where it probably won’t move much at all.

I was completely charmed by the very concept of “graceful degradation,” which I have adopted as a new hobby (it’ll make a nice change from ‘lowering my standards’). Aside from the profound personal ramifications, however, I began to wonder how many of our magazine readers, mostly small businesses making custom fabric products, would actually be willing to—or prefer to—read our publications electronically on a hand-held device. It seems to tie into the whole “high-tech” debate in our industry, and how an awning shop or an upholstery shop or a marine fabrication business can take advantage of all the new developments in fabrics and equipment … or whether they need to.

After last month’s IFAI Expo, especially, all indications are that there really is no “high-tech/traditional” dichotomy in this industry any more. Any cutting-edge company still has basic equipment and operations needed to produce high-tech products; and any traditional fabrication company can still make the change to the newest materials and techniques. We have an article coming up in our January issue about the latest possibilities in shade and solar control—which includes automatic sensors and operations, and may soon include solar power generation. Awnings are still awnings, but the possibilities are anything but standard. Craftsmanship endures, but technology advances.

There are still some barriers to cross for some of us, however. A case in point: Japan’s Teijin Fibers has developed a new two-dimensional communication sheet, called the Cell Form™, which establishes a connection between the sheet and a computer placed on it, creating a secure, high-speed, low-power signal. Teijin is working with Cellcross Co. Ltd. to develop applications with products containing radio frequency identification (RFID) tags—an automatic-recognition technology that passively transmits information stored in the tags, which shows immediate promise for anti-theft and real-time inventory applications. Other potential applications include artificial skins for robots, wearable computing, gaming systems, wireless power supply and much more.

It all sounds promising, but for those of us who view electronic readers as just another thing to drop in the bathtub, there’s a definite adoption curve. I imagine my house lined with Cell Form and populated with smart appliances all communicating with each other; and all I can think of is that I do not want my lawn mower, which is far from subservient even now, communicating with my kitchen appliances, which so far have remained generally under my control. Nor do I envision any possible happy outcomes emerging from an office chair specially upholstered to let the IT department know every time I get up to get coffee, or office supplies, or ice cream.

My plan is to degrade gracefully.

We’re all aware just how jobless this recovery has been so far. Last night I attended a Minnesota Magazine & Publications Association (MMPA) “Magazine Celebration,” at which Specialty Fabrics Review magazine was justifiably feted as one of our “Pioneers in Print,” since IFAI started publishing its flagship publication in 1915. I had already prepared myself to answer the inevitable questions about whether I was already the editor of the magazine at that time (“Yes, and I owe my continued good health and vitality to daily applications of alcohol, inside and out.”). But for the first time this year, attendance at the event was skewed more towards freelancers than editors, as layoffs and tight budgets gave networking a huge impetus. And I’d like to hire all of them, were I in a position to do so, even the one who greeted my arrival with “You brought your own wine!?”

(No, I didn’t. Well, technically, I did, but only because as I was arriving I happened to notice a new wine shop across the street, and dutifully stimulated the economy for a few minutes before heading back to the celebration. But I left the bottle in the bag, and stowed it carefully out of sight until I left. MMPA’s cash bar did not suffer.)

Which businesses are going to start putting people back to work? I began my online quest to see how company size affects company behavior. Then I found myself revisiting Christopher J. Nolan’s article in the September issue of the Review entitled “Moral fibre: business ethics and the specialty fabrics industry.” (They spell ‘fiber’ like that in Australia; we’ve found that it’s best not to enquire too deeply about that.) In his final paragraph, he says:

“We live in a society in which the dignity of labour is generally recognized, but that of commerce is not; where the simple economic model of capital versus labour has dehumanized the interaction between the two … Despite all of this, we still have the values of family, which are still inherent in family-owned businesses, which in turn form a large part of the specialty fabrics industry worldwide. As the global economy comes about, it may be this ethical framework which helps support the recovery of our businesses.”

It may not be company size, after all, that leads to a lack of ethics and community responsibility. Publicly owned corporations with boards of directors overseeing shareholder dividends undoubtedly have much less motivation to rank full employment over short-term profits, and much less leeway to do it even if so inclined. For privately owned companies, if business is stable and profits are sufficient, putting a greater emphasis on hiring to support the local community and the national economy is a feasible decision, short term and long term. As business gets better, consumers will remember who put the community first.

In this economy, specialty fabrics businesses have a unique opportunity to make an impact: work with local schools to establish internships; partner with the local employment office to offer flexible positions; get on the chamber of commerce and work with other businesses to create opportunities or lessen hardships. In the Oct. 1 blog, associate editor Janet Preus asks: “Training for trades: Who’s going to do it?”

It’s not a simple question, but there is a simple answer to getting the process started: hire them. Then train them.

I thought then, and I still think, that more young people should opt for technical training-not because they hate English class (many are good English students, too), but because we need trained workers in industry. (And this from an English teacher!)

Oh, I could recite a history of 15-year-olds who just reassembled the engine of a Ford Ranger in auto mechanics class but can't reliably construct a complete sentence to save their lives. I happen to think that all students should be able to write a coherent paragraph before receiving a diploma, but, then, I suppose I should know how to change the oil in my Pontiac.

The issue of technical training, however, goes far beyond entry level auto maintenance. Preparing for a trade career requires training in highly sophisticated computer programs, equipment and manufacturing processes. The people on your plant floor need to have a fairly comprehensive understanding of the equation that combines design and execution into a perfect finished product. Where are they learning this?

Our high school had an incredible graphics program fueled primarily by the personality of one teacher, not by school district policy. Our community college offered stellar health career training, but little that could be applied to fabric product manufacturing. If schools aren't going to promote training for skilled trade jobs—not as a second choice but as the right first choice for many young people—then the trades have to do it. Seems to me it could be more of a joint effort. Labor statistics tell us that by 2014 the number of jobs for workers without bachelor's degrees could be double the number available for people with a college education. Who is going to do the work?

I was pleased to see college-aged visitors at this year's Expo, and I was impressed by how engaged they were in the whole event—attending seminars and special events, and ‘meeting the industry' in person on the show floor. It would be great to see even more young people, who might discover a career they had not known before.

Education should be about cultivating an environment that not only rewards the success of students who choose technical training, but encourages them by elevating its stature in our schools. We can start with the English teachers.

One year my son gave me a t-shirt for my birthday that pictured a teacher at a chalkboard, pointer poised on a nonsense equation. The caption read, "School for the Mechanically Declined." My son thought it was apropos. In fact, I tiled my own kitchen and figured out simple repairs on my riding lawnmower, but in my case these are tantamount to Oscar-winning performances. People like me who forgot algebra by the beginning of 10th grade and think mechanical drawings look like an etch-a-sketch printout should encourage those who are not ‘mechanically declined' to use their gifts. We're going to need them.