Bamboo Clothing

THE HOST: Now, bamboo until recently was something you made furniture out of or watched a panda bear chewing into for a snack. But now this solid substance is being re-cast as a fabric for the future. Silky feeling, softer than cotton, bamboo cloth is even being recognised for its anti-bacterial qualities. Rich Delano is founder of Bamboo Textiles. He says he was the first to create the cloth and explained to the BBC's Natalie Resrahee how he came up with the idea.

RICH: I was working in China for a wood fibre company and they basically told me after a period of time, “look we can't afford you any more, we don't need you any more.” That was probably the worst day of my life but also the best day of my life because that is when I thought you know what I will do, I'll start my own company. I'll start it with bamboo. No one was doing bamboo anywhere in the world.

NATALIE: And what made you think oh bamboo, that's something I should try?

RICH: You know what, I started thinking about natural resources and sustainable resources and knowing my business was fibres and knowing all the different fibres that were out there in the market place and knowing that bamboo was not out there in the market, I figured that if I could spend time developing bamboo, it could be something in the future that not only myself but many others could develop into garments and apparels. 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?

RICH: I think right now it is kind of at the stages where it is in between. It's still middle class because of the price. It does cost a little bit more than just regular cotton. So right know it is basically a luxury or a middle class type of garment right now. You're not going to see it in the lower end retail, at least not for the next, I would think, 5 or7 years before it goes into the lower mass mass market.