Word: corfam
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Dates: during 1964-1964
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...Pont earned $325 million last year on sales of $2.6 billion. Most important, Du Pont is so busy challenging the market with new products and ideas that the upward trend is almost certain to continue. Recently the company has: - > Invaded the $5 billion-a-year footwear business with Corfam, a leather substitute that looks, feels and "breathes" like leather and could cut into the natural leather market the way nylon slashed into silk...
...Most of Du Pont's current products are things that never existed on land or sea until Du Pont research discovered or developed them: cellophane, nylon, Lucite and neoprene, tetraethyl (antiknock) lead for gasoline, Dacron and plastics. The latest product (not mentioned in the book) is known as Corfam, a scuff-resistant, water-repellent synthetic leather (TIME, April 3) that may in time revolutionize the shoe industry...
When testers complained at first of overheated feet, Du Pont changed the porosity of the material, which now has a million holes per sq. ft. At New burgh, torture-chamber machines bend the Corfam shoes millions of times, tear pieces of Corfam apart at high tension and abrasively duplicate the rubbing action of heels against shoe backs...
...Pont is using a shrewd strategy in marketing its material. To establish reliability and chic, it has deliberately had the material put into higher-priced shoes-usually $20 and up. Once Corfam's prestige is established, Du Pont will gradually lower its price to embrace ever wider markets, moving next year into the $17-$20 shoe range. By next spring it also expects to enter the profitable children's field, where Du Pont already has a thriving competitor in tiny Arnav Industries of New Jersey, which is making a roughly similar material of its own for children...
Aardvark to Zebra. The shoe, in fact, seems to be only the beginning of the possibilities for Corfam, which can be made in any thickness or consistency. Some stores are already selling women's handbags made of Corfam, and Corfam briefcases and luggage are being tested. Du Pont is working to put it into industrial gaskets and belting, and one sporting goods manufacturer is already making baseballs, basketballs and golf-club handles of Corfam. Corfam can also be fashioned into washable jackets, dresses, draperies, wall covers -and can be made to look like any kind of skin from aardvark...