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L Brands has been focused to diversify its supply chain over the past five years. The company has been in negotiations with its Chinese suppliers to take costs out of the production chain to offset the increases but that also means leaving a little bit on the table so vendors don’t end up seeing their businesses fail.
By the end of 2019, China is expected to represent less than 20 per cent of the brand’s total production. L Brands’ move to other locales is less about tariffs and more about good business practices. The company had been moving production outside China even before the tariffs, putting it in a diversified supply chain position ahead of the hikes. A few years back, 84 per cent of its bra pads were made in China. Most of that is now in Vietnam and Sri Lanka. The lingerie group still works with Chinese vendors, but now less than five per cent of bras are made in China.
The problem with China is not where the product is being made, but also where the raw materials come from. For L Brands’ beauty offerings, 90 per cent of the beauty products are made in the US but all the chemicals used are made in China.
Chinos Holdings plans to split the Madewell denim brand from J Crew as the company plans to raise funds to pay off some of its $1.7 billion in debt, although the volume of shares and their projected value is yet to be revealed. According to this plan, Chinos Holdings will be renamed as Madewell Group.
The Madewell denim brand is considered to be more successful than its sister J Crew which has been struggling to maintain market share and brand appeal in recent years. In the second quarter of this year, the company’s sales rose by 15 per cent to $139.7 million with same-store sales up 10 per cent. That followed a 28-per-cent rise in sales in the same quarter a year ago. J Crew sales, however, fell by 7 per cent in the second quarter, to about $400 million, with comp-store sales down by 4 per cent.
Imports of polyester yarn from India increased 193 per cent from July 2018 to July 2019.Similarly, viscose yarn imports shot up 342 per cent from July last year to July 2019.
Between July 2018 and June 2019, there has been a substantial rise in the imports of all manmade fiber products. Manmade fiber yarn and apparel imports have gone up 83 per cent and 84 per cent. GST made imports more than 12 per cent cheaper.
Rising imports are impacting domestic yarn and garment manufacturers in a big way and are acting as a big disincentive for the upstream industry from investing. There are certain structural issues like relatively higher fiber, power and interest rates, which have made the upstream industry costlier and hence attracting cheaper imports from other countries. Further, under GST, manmade fiber textile products suffer from an inverted duty structure as manmade fiber, yarns and fabrics attract GST at the rate of 18 per cent, 12 per cent and 5 per cent respectively. This has resulted in heavily blocking working capital. Plus the GST paid on capital goods, services and certain inputs is being added to the cost of the manmade fiber textile buyer. These taxes are not considered for calculation of refund of input tax credits and have made manmade fiber textiles costlier.
India is developing 40 new Harmonized System of Nomenclature (HSN) codes for the technical textile sector.HSN is an international commodity description and coding system developed by the World Customs Organization. The codes will facilitate monitoring of export data and providing financial support to the Indian textile sector. The main purpose of HSN codes is to classify goods from all over the world in a systematic and logical manner. This brings in a uniform classification of goods and facilitates international trade. The HSN system is used by more than 200 countries and economies for uniform classification, as a base for their customs tariffs and for collection of international trade statistics. The code will help make a comprehensive formula for monitoring export data.
In the absence of clear classification of the technical textile sector, many genuine manufacturers are not able to avail of incentives being allowed to the sector. HSN will enable the use of these incentives.
The global market for technical textiles has a very high CAGR but India lags with respect to the annual growth rate of this sector, often called a sunrise industry. The codes can help achieve a sectoral market size of up to two lakh crore rupees by 2020-21.
Groz-Beckert has developed a new base material combined with a patented manufacturing process called dur. The company plans to extend the dur version to the complete product range soon.
Within the traditional nonwovens industry, Groz-Beckert’s Gebecon felting needle provides advantages on the surface quality of final product and optimised needling parameters. The company also has such a product for spun lace customers: coming along with absolutely homogenous jet creation, with a large impelling force and excellent entanglement, Groz-Beckert’s HyTec P jet strip ensures the very best productivity, quality and efficiency. Compared to conventional jet strips, the new material possesses a much greater hardness which causes longer usage time in production.
With the carding product sector, Groz-Beckert completes its portfolio for the nonwovens industry. The worker and doffer wires SiroLock and EvoStep, for example, are designed to ensure improved fiber control and web quality. SiroLock also impresses with performance enhancements in carding, while the EvoStep card clothing emphasises on saving raw material. The sewing and joining service from Groz-Beckert, which can now be accessed from several locations around the world, provides scores of pointers and support for optimal sewing operation and the best end product possible. Sewing 5 from Groz-Beckert stands for Supply, Solutions, Service, Superiority and Sustainability.
Messe Frankfurt will host two international editions of its Fashionsustain Conference in Los Angeles and Shanghai. The Los Angeles edition will be held on September 20, 2019 at the LA Fashion Festival (LAFF) in Los Angeles while the Shanghai edition will be held during the Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics show on September 26 in Shanghai.
The theme for LAFF, Fashionsustainis "The change of fashion is now" and will take place in close cooperation with Lenzing. The two-day LA Fashion Festival will combine influences from film, retail, innovation and beauty to create immersive cultural experiences.
The Shanghai edition will be introduced by Edwin Keh of Hong Kong Research Institute of Textile and Apparel. The event will be attended by Andreas Streubig, Director of Global Sustainability, Hugo Boss; JiehuiKia, Principal Sustainability Strategiest, Forum for the Future; Micke Magnusson, Change Agent and Advisor, ReAccess and Mikkel Hansen, Program and Partnership lead at Explorium, Fung Group. They will dwell on the importance and challenges of building more pilot projects in the field of textile innovation and how new textiles can be brought to market faster.
Australia should take cue from the circular economy on recycling, reusing its waste rather than sending it to landfill says business advisory firm EY. A combined approach to waste which includes households, local councils and the private sector would lead to the start of a win-win circular economy and shifting to a more circular economy will grow the economy, increase jobs and reduce impacts on the environment.
Before 2017 Australia would send waste to China for processing, sending 6,19,000 tons of recycling waste to China every year. But then China decided to tighten the restrictions on accepting foreign waste. The new standards effectively banned all Australian paper, plastics and textiles because of their high contamination rate.
EY underlines the need for Australia to view waste as a valuable resource and for households to take a more diligent approach to sorting. As of now there is a lack of confidence currently among households with the country’s recycling methods. Consumers need to see waste as a tradable asset, a commodity with a market value and the first step in changing consumer behavior is restoring their belief that what they are putting in the recycling bin is actually being recycled. Restoring the customer’s faith in the broken recycling system would be the first step toward creating a viable circular economy and finding a solution to the recycling crisis in Australia.
California will be the first US state to ban sales and manufacture of fur. The bill makes it unlawful to sell, display and distribute for monetary and non-monetary consideration a fur product. The bill also would make it unlawful to manufacture a fur product in the state for sale. The proposed law offers exemptions for the sale of vintage fur as well as fur products used for religious ceremonies. A ban would not regulate skins converted into leather or products such as shearling from domesticated animals. The ban would apply to clothing, handbags, shoes, slippers, hats and key chains that contain fur. Civil penalties might be pursued against those convicted of selling or manufacturing fur products in California.
Fur products are already under scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission and the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Many brands have dropped angora wool from their clothing lines. So far more than 300 major retailers have banned angora. Angora rabbit fur is being used for sweaters, hats, gloves, and more. Angora rabbits have long, soft fur. Most angora comes from rabbits on Chinese factory farms. The rabbits writhe in agony as workers tie them down and rip out their fur. Mohair is another product that involves cruelty.
Apparel exporters have applauded the central government’s decision to continue the Merchandise Exports from India Scheme (MEIS), an incentive scheme to promote exports, till December 31, 2019.The MEIS would provide duty credit scrip to compensate the duty paid by the exporters. The scheme was earlier supposed to be stopped after July 31. But the exporters were worried that it would further deepen crisis in apparel exports which was already facing several challenges including stiff international competition.
If MEIS would have been scrapped, the incentives received by the exporters would have been halved. This would have made it difficult for them to survive in the market.
adidas has been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) for the twentieth time in a row. This year also marks the twentieth edition of the globally recognised indices, which evaluate the sustainability performance of the largest 2,500 companies listed in the Dow Jones Global Total Stock Market Index.
The comprehensive assessment considers factors such as corporate governance, risk management, climate change mitigation, labor and environmental standards both within the company and with its suppliers, as well as innovation management.
In addition to being again included in the indices, adidas was ranked best in its industry in the criteria of Brand Management, Information Security/Cyber Security & System Availability, Environmental Policy & Management Systems, Operational Eco-Efficiency, Social Reporting and Talent Attraction & Retention. adidas continues to become ever more sustainable.
The sporting goods manufacturer is currently pursuing tangible and measurable targets up to 2020. Its key priorities include the use of more sustainable materials for products, tackling water scarcity in manufacturing countries and further improving working conditions in the supply chain. The brand plans to use recycled polyester in each of its product from 2024.
