Word: du
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...threat to the industry comes largely from giant Du Pont, which has developed its own synthetic material for shoes after 13 years of searching in the labs. Du Pont is producing the material at a pilot plant in Newburgh, N.Y., is building a plant in Tennessee for full-scale production, and is exploring foreign markets with an eye to building overseas plants. The largest U.S. shoemaker, St. Louis' International Shoe Co.. hopes to make shoes from Du Pont's material by spring of 1964, and other firms are sure to follow. A similar synthetic material has been...
Secretive as Russians. Both Du Pont and Arnav are as secretive as Russians about their processes, but both achieved breakthroughs by finding a method of putting thousands of microscopic holes into synthetics to enable them to "breathe." Both firms shy away from calling the synthetics plastics; Du Pont is calling its product a "poromeric material" (meaning full of microscopic holes) until it can decide on a trademark name. The shoe material is made in two or three layers: outside is a polyvinyl chloride film that can be treated to look like any leather, from cordovan to suede; next is either...
...shoes are said to be waterproof and scuff-resistant and are supposed to keep a permanent shine. Both Du Pont's and Arnav's new material has the advantage of coming in uniform, easy-to-handle rolls instead of in awkward pieces shaped like a cow. Though the new material is thus much cheaper to produce than leather, Du Pont has no intention of damaging its discovery's reputation by putting it into cheap shoes, will sell the material for a considerably higher price than the 40? to 80? per sq. ft. for leather. Though Arnav could...
Lestoil Syndrome. Du Pont had the nylon market to itself for 15 years, and did well with Dacron too. But when it went into production of its tough new Delrin plastic-a breakthrough it considers as important as nylon-hardly two years passed before competing Celanese Corp. hit the market with an almost identical plastic developed by its own chemists. U.S. Steel recently developed a new, economical "thin tin" plate-only to find other steel companies out in six months with a thin tin that customers liked better because it gleamed brighter; Big Steel is now copying some...
Little Protection. Sometimes company research moves so fast that it makes a company's own products obsolete. Du Pont's Dacron is giving tough competition to the company's nylon and rayon, and Du Pont has decided to give up making rayon altogether. General Electric's recently announced silicon transistor will sell for half the price of its own germanium transistor...