Flock Academy - Big Success!

AFA Flock Academy 2023: A full house & a global audience

Flock Academy 2023, held on Sept. 21, was an even stronger success than expected. All seats were filled and the attendees included both owners of manufacturing plants looking at flock as a potential growth industry and flock manufacturing production and quality managers.

This was the first Flock Academy held online via Zoom, which made attending easy for parties around the globe. Our offshore attendees were either currently involved with flocking or considering expanding into this arena. Countries outside the USA represented at the workshop included Mexico, Turkey, India, and Spain.

Flock Academy featured several lecturers from inside the industry representing more than 200 years of experience manufacturing flocked goods and designing with flocked materials. Session leaders addressed a number of topics, including but not limited to, the nuances related to the manufacturing side of flock, how to select and cut the tow (fibers) used to make flock, the virtually limitless number of substrates that can be flocked, how to design with flock and how to select the best adhesives.

The workshop also addressed new markets opening up and expanding for flocked surfaces. For example, flock is highly durable and has a number of unique qualities that are useful to the interior design of today’s automobiles. This includes sound dampening, surface protection, glare prevention and creating a very coarse or soft surface.

The automobile industry relies heavily on flocking and with a new generation of electric vehicles on the horizon, flocking will be more in demand than ever to help with noise reduction, among many other things. Attendees also learned that flock is being used on the dashboards of performance cars to prevent glare.

“We are really pleased to see the positive responses by attendees. Their feedback will guide us to make Flock Academy 2 even better,” said Steve Rosenthal,” Managing Director of the American Flock Association.

Stay tuned to learn about our next Flock Academy. Open to people throughout the industry – and affiliated industries – Flock Academy is free for the attendees. You can click here to add your name to the wait list for our next workshop.

We look forward to seeing you there!