apparel
s. So I thought what I'll do, I sell fibre and
yarn
. But for six months no one wanted to buy the fibre or yarn. No one wanted anything to do with the fibre. I was trying to sell all over the US and all over the world, and everyone would look at it and think not interested, not interested, not interested. But as soon as I made some T-shirts then
the whole ball game changed
. Because once I had something that someone could feel how soft it was and how
wonderful
it was and how it made their body feel once they wore it. Right away, then obviously my company turned around.
NATALIE: So as you say, it's soft and people have said it feels silky.
Apart from
that what are the other
properties
of this fabric?
RICH: I would say another
property
that bamboo has is that it keeps your body temperature really cool. So what happens is that when you are wearing the shirt or wearing the garments on your body, your body temperature doesn't seem to rise. An example would be of one the special properties of bamboo, when we are silk screening or printing on our shirts, we'll put a cotton shirt through an oven to dry the ink onto the shirt and the cotton shirt will come out really hot when it comes out of the oven. When we are silk screening a bamboo shirt and it is going through the oven, it actually comes out kind of cool. So it doesn't retain a ton of heat.
NATALIE: And who is this going to be for? Is this a luxury good or is it mass market thing?