Double rows of exquisitely made teeth, with a slider that locks them together, and then a tab, all at once you have a tool to make sure your bag or a pair of pants are perfectly closed-I was talking about a zipper. In our everyday life we have metal zippers for wallets and nylon zippers for dresses. The zippers that we can not live without now were invented more than 100 years ago in the United States.
However the zipper manufacturing industry now is dominated by a Japanese company called YKK and the Chinese zipper manufacturers are catching up very closely.
Advanced Japan
Open your closet and look for the zipper tabs on any of your clothes that have zipper, the most probable letters you will find is YKK. This is a Japanese corporation that is the top zipper manufacturer worldwide.
The reason for it to succeed is about opening or investing factories oversea.
An American invention
As most of the zipper users do not know, the tiny but magic thing was born in the U.S. The first use of it was on rubber galoshes. But then the use on textile was discovered. For a quite long time, people use buttons, ribbons and even hooks on garment. But comparing to them, the zipper replacement and zipper repair was so much easier and most importantly, the zippers are cheaper.
Talon fails
Though there was indeed glorious days for American zipper manufacture industry. Talon used to own 70% percent of the market. It didn’t do enough to improve productivity and fail to innovate. Talon overlooked the trend of luggage zippers, outdoor gears and other new usages in garment and textile. Therefore, 10 years later it’s once top market share was down to a few percentages.
More global stars
The zipper industry has become a market that one dominant role, the Japanese company mentioned before with a fiercely competitive brink comprising several hundred, mainly from China. A global duopoly is taking shape. And a war is not too exaggerating the situation. The business competition can get to the level that involves economic nationalism, industrial espionage and infringing patents of certain company. But we can never who is winning in the coming future. I mean no one thought an American invention was mainly manufactured by a Japanese company some decades ago.