June 10, 2004, New York, NY — The International Forum for Cotton Promotion held its Spring Cotton Promotion Workshop May 23-26 at Cotton Incorporated's Cary, NC world headquarters. Hosted by Cotton Incorporated, Cotton Council International, and the International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC), the workshop focused on promotion techniques, case histories and the launch of domestically focused and funded cotton promotion programs.

At the workshop, Cotton Incorporated and Cotton Council International staff highlighted the basics of cotton promotion strategies from the most elementary to the most advanced.

According to Allen Terhaar, IFCP Chair and Executive Director of Cotton Council International, "Fourteen member organizations from ten countries — including South Africa, India, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, and Turkey — sent representatives to the seminar. Although some countries' programs are in their infancy, all are interested in practical ways to promote cotton fiber to the consumer."

According to Mark Messura, Vice President of Strategic Planning at Cotton Incorporated and Treasurer of IFCP, "To ensure viability of promotion, there must be a continued focus on fiber content labeling. Consumers cannot choose a product by fiber type if they don't know the fiber content. We have to constantly work to improve the labeling laws."

International cotton exchanges are also active in IFCP. "The trading organizations play an important role in cotton activity, and our eyes have been opened by this workshop," said Bremen's Elke Hortmeyer. Zbigniew Roskwitalski of Poland's Gdynia Cotton Association agreed, "It is essential that the promotion of cotton not be the problem of a single country only." "We discussed everything from logo strategies to how weather affects promotion activity," noted Andrew MacDonald, representing both the Liverpool Cotton Exchange and Brazil. Suresh Kotak added that cotton has outstanding growth opportunities in technical and industrial applications.

The seminar closed with competitive initiatives. IFCP Executive Director Jeffrey Silberman noted, "We have once again seen how cotton demand enhancement helps everyone except the true competition: The chemical fiber manufacturers."

The International Forum for Cotton Promotion is a non-governmental association of national and international cotton organizations whose purpose is to facilitate and encourage domestically focused and domestically funded demand enhancement programs to improve cotton's market share at retail. The IFCP website can be found at www.cottonpromotion.org.

For additional information, contact Jeffrey P. Silberman at jeff@icac.org.