Long John Group has become the first commercial customer for Karl Mayer's new RDJ 7/3 Jacquard Double Needle Bar Raschel Machine, putting the equipment into operation at its manufacturing plant in Indonesia. The machine launched officially on 20 August, with representatives from leading global athletic footwear brands and Karl Mayer management attending the event.

The investment lands at the fabric tier of the athletic footwear supply chain, where warp-knitted uppers, linings and spacer fabrics are produced for international brands. Long John, founded by Jeff Wen in 1983, operates facilities in Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Indonesia, plus a sales office in the United States. Its vertically integrated operations cover spinning, weaving, knitting, warp knitting, dyeing and finishing.

The scale of that base explains why the debut matters. According to Karl Mayer, Long John has already produced fabrics for more than 313 million pairs of shoes using Jacquard double needle bar raschel technology.

What the machine changes

The RDJ 7/3 features three wireless Jacquard bars. Karl Mayer developed it to give manufacturers increased flexibility in sophisticated footwear textiles: complex patterns, precisely positioned functional zones, three-dimensional structures and distinctive design effects.

For Long John specifically, the machine expands existing design capability. It can produce larger, more precisely defined hole structures and integrate patterns and functional zones directly into fabrics during knitting. Custom Jacquard designs can incorporate contrasting two-colour effects and creative colour combinations, while three-dimensional surfaces and embossed effects can also be produced on-machine, without downstream processing steps.

Warp knitting already sits at the centre of Long John's product development. Its portfolio includes open-design stretch tricot fabrics for footwear uppers and linings, alongside high-performance spacer fabrics with plain and Jacquard-patterned mesh surfaces.

A thirteen-year technology relationship

The installation extends a longstanding buyer-supplier relationship. Long John bought its first Karl Mayer Jacquard double needle bar raschel machine, from the RDPJ series, in 2012 and has since acted as an early adopter of several newly developed machines.

Karl Mayer positions the RDJ 7/3 as a platform for greater design flexibility and efficient production in the performance footwear market. The industrial debut at Long John gives the German machinery maker a reference site inside an established supplier to the global athletic footwear industry.

At the launch event, Karl Josef Mayer, grandson of Karl Mayer's founder, discussed the latest textile innovations with Kevin Wen, son of founder and Chairman Jeff Wen — a signal of how closely the two family-run companies track each other's product roadmaps.

Next visibility point

Brands and fabric suppliers evaluating the technology will get a closer look shortly. Karl Mayer will demonstrate the RDJ 7/3 during a Product Show at Karl Mayer China in Changzhou on 19, 20, 21 and 23 November 2026, held in conjunction with ITMA Asia.

For sourcing teams at athletic footwear brands, the news is a confirmed capacity signal: a major Taiwanese-origin fabric supplier with plants across Taiwan, China, Vietnam and Indonesia can now offer in-pattern functional zones and 3D structures knitted directly on-machine. Sourcing decisions that previously balanced design complexity against additional processing steps may shift toward suppliers holding the new three-bar platform. Competitor fabric mills face the question of whether to place their own RDJ 7/3 orders ahead of the Changzhou showcase.