It is a real pleasure to be with you and to have an opportunity to share some observations which bear on our mutual ability to move our respective products into channels of trade profitability.

It was in 1982 that Tom Peters published his book entitled "In Search of Excellence." It was in the decade of the eighties that the U.S. Department of Commerce awarded the first annual Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award. Almost every convention theme and thousands of seminars had their central focus on "excellence" or "quality" during the decade of the eighties, and that focus has continued into the nineties.

The American textile industry has formal programs operating in virtually every company to encourage excellence in every facet of operations. All of these points to a growing recognition by management that not only profitability, but survival, depends on delivering the best product or service for the money in a highly competitive global market.

This concept has certainly not gone unnoticed by the U.S. cotton industry. Over the past decade, we've seen dramatic improvement in the quality of fiber as well as packaging and delivery of cotton. And improvement continues as farmers, processors and handlers throughout the industry, respond to the demands of the market. The recent modification in the cotton classing system, which breaks out color and leaf, is, for example, a progressive step to reward growers for preserving quality in the production, harvesting and ginning of cotton.