Lycra sees China as preferred innovation 'playground'

China is not only The Lycra Company's largest regional market by customer numbers, but also the preferred "playground" for testing innovative concepts, Nicolas Banyols, the company's chief commercial officer, said during Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics Autumn Edition.

The three-day fair opened on Tuesday in Shanghai, where Lycra unveiled an immersive co-creation space with 19 co-exhibitors showcasing integrated outcomes from fiber to fabric to garment.

Banyols said China's complete and highly agile value chain — spanning design, fabric development and garment manufacturing — allows a new product to go from development to market in just a few months, a speed that is reshaping the company's global innovation rhythm.

"For us, China is almost like a 'playground' where we test all our stories. If I think about the past five years, for every single product launch and innovation, the first adopter is very often China," he said.

Over the next three to five years, Lycra plans to further leverage China's role as an innovation test bed, Banyols added. A decade ago, new products were typically pitched first to established Western brands; today, the company engages Chinese partners in parallel, and products that resonate locally can reach retail shelves quickly.

On consumer trends, Banyols said core demand among young consumers is largely consistent globally — greater comfort, enhanced performance and compelling product narratives. China's differentiation lies in the details, such as a strong preference for ultraviolet protection and a pleasant tactile feel, but the most significant gap is the speed at which Chinese consumers expect newness.

"But what really makes a difference, in my opinion, for Chinese consumers compared to the West, is the appetite for newness — newness has to come really quickly," he said, adding that by contrast, Western markets take far longer to absorb new products, while Chinese consumers expect fresh offerings within a single season — a demand that has both nurtured China's supply chain agility and pressured brands to accelerate iteration.

As consumer needs evolve, category boundaries in apparel continue to be blurred — ready-to-wear brands enter outdoor, sportswear brands launch denim and formal wear labels expand into athletic lines. The market increasingly demands complex, multifunctional solutions that no single company can deliver alone.

"For us, this trend is a dream," Banyols said, adding that while individual fiber technologies can be copied, the company's ability to integrate the global value chain and coordinate partners across segments is difficult to replicate — the core message behind the "lifestyle district".

He described the company as a "translator", leveraging its presence across every textile segment and its global footprint to share cross-category and cross-regional insights with partners.

Wang Xu, vice-president for Asia at Lycra, said China's complete and responsive supply chain is accelerating the commercialization of new technologies.

At the fair, the company debuted Coolmax CloakFX fiber in woven applications for sweat-masking and anti-sheer performance; previewed Lycra FiT400 spandex-free stretch fiber in both knit and woven versions; and showcased commercially produced renewable Lycra fiber.