Because I own a small bedding store, I come into contact with all kinds of customers every day. I don’t want to talk about the grievances between online stores and physical stores here, nor do I want to complain about the destruction of physical stores by the current market environment. What I want to talk to you about is pure cotton and polyester cotton.
Because I am located in a fourth-tier town, and my store is located in a community renovated from a large government shantytown, the customers I come into contact with are those who have no experience in shopping. How much money do ordinary people have. Their living standards are really low. I don’t mean to discriminate against them because I am one of them. When I buy something, I also care about its price, shop around, and bargain. In such a market environment, my store is also positioned in the mid- to low-end category. Even so, every day I often face customers who are scared away by the prices in the store. At first, I thought it was strange. The products I sell are all genuine pure cotton fabrics directly from the manufacturer, and the prices are the same as those in nearby large wholesale markets. Why are there so many customers who are scared away? Until one day, an outspoken elder sister told me the truth. She said that I bought a pure cotton double quilt cover from someone else’s house for only 40 yuan. Why did yours cost 72 yuan? Your store must be a shady store, why is it that for the same flower pattern, your store sells almost twice as much as other people’s stores? Such words shocked me, and I even wondered if I had been deceived by the manufacturer. This elder sister was so refreshing. She seemed to think that I didn’t believe her. She even went home and brought her quilt cover to me. The truth of the matter is that the so-called pure cotton quilt covers of the same design and color that the eldest sister brought were actually very low-quality polyester fiber textiles.
Let’s call this polyester fiber textile polyester. Let me first state here that polyester is not bad. In some fields, polyester is also an excellent and irreplaceable product. I just want to talk about the polyester in the field of bedding products that is passed off as pure cotton by some unscrupulous merchants.
The raw materials of polyester fiber are mainly obtained from petroleum cracking, but can also be obtained from coal and natural gas. Petroleum is heated and cracked to obtain toluene, xylene and ethylene, etc. After chemical processing, terephthalic acid or dimethyl terephthalate and ethylene glycol can be obtained. In the early polyester production, dimethyl terephthalate and ethylene glycol were used as raw materials because terephthalic acid was difficult to refine.
How can bedding made from raw materials extracted from petroleum be used as a close-fitting bed sheet and quilt cover?
Maybe some people are indeed from poor families and do not have the extra money or experience to consider whether they are comfortable or not, but I feel that as a merchant, I have the obligation to inform customers of the true attributes of the product. Some unscrupulous merchants talk about the advantages of pure cotton, but in the end they sell inferior polyester. This will not only mislead consumers, but also create a burden on other businesses. After all, there is a big price difference between pure cotton and polyester.
I know that saying so much is actually of no use. Selling sheep’s heads as dog meat has been happening in every field. I just want to be responsible to my customers. Nowadays, the so-called pure cotton four-piece suits priced at less than 120 yuan are all fake. That’s all I can say.
Let me introduce how to distinguish between pure cotton and polyester.
First of all, pure cotton is thinner than polyester.
Secondly, with the same volume, pure cotton is much heavier than polyester.
Third, you can do a blowing experiment. Blow on pure cotton bedding. The airflow will pass through without resistance, while polyester bedding will take some effort.
Fourth, the most intuitive method is the combustion experiment. When pure cotton fabrics are burned, green smoke will curl up, with a pure cotton smell. There are no small particles in the burned ashes, and they will turn into powder when crushed. When polyester fabric burns, thick smoke will billow, with strong black smoke and a pungent smell. The ashes after burning will also appear like a condensed black substance after burning plastic, which cannot be crushed by hand.
Fifth, during use, pure cotton fabrics will not pill or fade. They have good air permeability and will not generate static electricity, but they will shrink slightly. On the contrary, it will pill after a short time, fade seriously, cause itchiness and dryness of the skin, and polyester will generate static electricity in dry weather.
Sixth, the price of pure cotton cloth is between 15 yuan/meter and 48 yuan/meter (due to different weaving methods, dyeing processes, manufacturers, thickness, etc.). The general price of polyester-cotton fabrics is between 2 yuan/meter and 12 yuan/meter.
