DuPont steps up marketing of Teflon

Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 12/18/2000 12:00:00 AM

WILMINGTON, DE -DuPont plans to step up global marketing of its Teflon brand flouroprotectant. The move could help it capture market share that came up for grabs when 3M announced that it was withdrawing its Scotchguard fabric strain protection product from the market due to potential health concerns.

The company will announce its new marketing strategy during the first quarter of 2001, according to Teresa Kleinhans, global textiles manager. The program will replace DuPont's current strategy of employing a series of regional ad and PR agencies. "Now we're going to take a unified global approach for the textiles business," Kleinhans said.

The campaign will include business-to-business as well as consumer marketing initiatives, including retail signage that will debut in January and roll out by the beginning of the second quarter.

Since the 3M announcement, DuPont representatives have been out on the hustings to clarify the difference between 3M's withdrawn product-which used an electrochemical fluorination process-and its own Teflon solution, which uses a processing method called tetrafluoroethylene telomerization.

"We have picked up some business," Kleinhans said.