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The weaving sector of India is expected to improve in the coming months. Reason: positive signs from China, one of the leading importers of yarn from India. During October 2018, cotton yarn, fabrics and made-ups witnessed a growth of 25 per cent, while manmade fibers, textiles and apparel grew by 31 per cent, 28 per cent and 54 per cent respectively. All commodities witnessed a growth of 33 per cent during the same period. India is likely to outdo China in the textile sector.
Contributing factors are cheap labor and modernization. With quality and skilled labor and machinery, India can easily overcome Chinese competition in the textile industry as labor costs in China are very high compared to India’s. India aims at doubling the annual revenue from textiles by 2025.
Foreign direct investment is being encouraged in the textile sector, which has the potential to create millions of jobs. The textile sector in India is showing signs of recovery. The stressed advance ratio of the textile sub-sector has improved in March 2018 from the levels of September 2017.
The sector was heavily hit by demonetization, GST, rupee appreciation and high domestic cotton prices. Packages and incentives are expected to create a strong turnaround in the textile and clothing sector.
Pure Origin will be held in the UK from February 10 to 12, 2019. This is the UK’s number one destination for sourcing and manufacturing, knowledge and solutions. As a convenient and cost-effective way for buyers to meet with UK and international manufacturers, Pure Origin brings together over 200 exhibitors from 13 countries to create a wide range of business and networking opportunities, new thinking and innovation. Garment and fabric suppliers, denim and textile designers and technology brands attract buyers, sourcing, and technical personnel from the likes of Asos, White Stuff, Victoria Beckham, River Island, JD Sports, Marks & Spencer and Selfridges.
The event helps companies promote business amid global economic and political uncertainties like Brexit and the ongoing trade wars. It intends to do this by answering the market’s demand for newness, to create a platform for visitors to meet, network, discuss and hopefully find solutions to the biggest challenges facing them, and to inspire, showcase innovation and advocate best practice to enable growth and stability.
This edition of Pure Origin will focus on Italy. It will showcase some of the best of Italian fashion with leading fabric houses, manufacturers, labeling and packaging companies showcasing their collections.
Tirupur exporters are urging the rate of duty drawback for the garment sector to be around 4.5 per cent as against the current two per cent. The industry rate of duty drawback usually announced in September/October has not been announced this year. One reason for the delay in announcement could be the rupee depreciation against the dollar.
After softening of crude oil prices, the rupee has been declining against the dollar. The trend is expected to continue. But the benefit of rupee depreciation has been short-lived and the knitwear exporters are already feeling the pinch.
In the first half of the current financial year, total knitwear exports from India fell 10.8 per cent as against the corresponding period in the previous year. For the same period knitwear exports from Tirupur fell by 11 per cent.
Exporters in Tirupur have also been awaiting their ROSL (Rebate on State Levies) refunds for three months. For the Tirupur knitwear cluster alone, the pending ROSL claims (1.7 per cent free on board worth exports) work out to be Rs 105 crores.
Tirupur exporters also want India to expedite free trade agreement with Russia, which has given Bangladesh the duty-free garment facility, and they hope India can also avail of this facility.
Karl Mayer is all set to introduce new machines for terry fabrics and curtains. This will be showcased at the oncoming Heimtextil trade fair to be held from 8 to 11 January 2019 in Frankfurt, German. A new weft curtain article is captivating due to an extravagant design in the currently fashionable woven-like look. Sophisticated fancy yarn gives the warp-knitted weft curtain a completely new face. For this article, Karl Mayer has announced a new weft-insertion warp knitting machine with an extremely attractive price-performance ratio.
The machine for the terry segment can produce a revolutionary textile novelty: a double-face warp-knitted terry fabric with a soft velour layer made from microfibers on the outer face, and an absorbent surface made from cotton on the inner side. This article for bathrobes is not only functional and stylish, it also shows the advantages in terms of environmental protection compared to woven counterparts, and this is due to the machine technology used for its manufacture.
Karl Mayer is a world market leader in textile machinery. All products from Karl Mayer are of the highest quality and the result of ultra-modern production processes in application. In 2014, Karl Mayer started a comprehensive investment program with the objective to strengthen the company’s production section in order to face challenges of the future. The answer was a comprehensive reorganization of the processes, modernization of the buildings and investments in a state-of-the-art machine equipment.
Denim and jeans manufacturers are finding their way through the sourcing complexities created by the US-China trade war. They are shifting their sourcing strategies to counter the trade climate. But production development has never been more at the forefront to meet new consumer challenges and sustainability requirements.
What’s happened as a result of the trade war and actual and threatened tariffs is that China has lost jeans market share mostly to other Asian nations. However, a lot of Chinese fabrics are now being exported to countries like Vietnam and Cambodia to make apparel, since they don’t have a textile base.
Changes are also taking place in the market thanks to smaller companies being able to make an impact with the growth of direct-to-consumer channels. These brands are working directly with fabric mills to develop materials to meet their customers’ needs. Brands have a sustainability strategy now that is built into their raw material buying plan. They want a certain percentage of sustainable cotton. They want a percentage of recycled polyester and they want reused materials. They want an aesthetic, but it has to include a sustainable or ecological element to meet their company goals and to be able to tell a brand story.
China offers great prospects for sports brands. Adidas has more than 11,000 retail outlets across China. It is also expanding operations in China, with some 1000 new store openings a year. Adidas saw a year-on-year sales growth of 29 per cent in 2017 in China. It also saw sales grow by 26 per cent on an annual basis in the third quarter this year.
Decathlon, a France-based sporting goods and equipment retailer, had 267 stores in China by the end of 2017. The rapid growth of overseas sports brands in China has been spurred by increased spending on sporting goods, whether sportswear and active wear, fitness facilities or products like protein powers for body builders. Consumers are spending more and more on sports products as they pursue more outdoor hobbies like diving, kayaking and paragliding. They are buying outdoor gear like clothes, shoes, professional watches, socks and so forth.
Overseas sports brands are flourishing at a time when many other overseas brands are facing a tough time with Chinese consumers, due to the country’s economic downward pressure, fiercer competition from domestic brands, and tough global trade environment.
The news of a delay in implementation of tariffs on $200 billion worth of goods imported by China, was welcomed by retailers as a way to de-escalate the looming trade war that the industry fears that such tariffs will spark. Referring to the delay as a ‘breakthrough,’ Hun Quach, VP for international trade at the Arlington-based Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), believes it will keep America competitive, grow its economy and support the millions of American jobs impacted by trade. Achieving a resolution that forgoes a 25 per cent increase and any additional tariffs placed on everyday consumer items will benefit millions of American families across the country. In a recent letter to President Trump, RILA laid out retailers’ issues with the tariff increase and lack of exclusion process for List 3, encompassing thousands of everyday consumer items like apparel items and paper goods.
A new report by KnowTheChain, a benchmark that measures companies' efforts to address forced labor shows, clothing and footwear companies have failed to tackle the exploitation of workers in their supply chains. The analysis gives the apparel and footwear sector an average overall score of just 37 out of 100.
While the 2018 benchmark shows improvement from the sector since KnowTheChain's previous benchmark in 2016, the majority of companies scored poorly with more than two-thirds of companies scoring below 50/100. Industry-wide progress is uneven and lacking on key issues such as responsible recruitment—one of the areas with the most direct impact on vulnerable workers' lives.
Despite decades of public scrutiny over labor conditions in the industry, workers, particularly migrants and women, are often exploited through force, fraud or coercion. Many work for little or no pay, cut off from their homes or families, and with restrictions on their movement or opportunities for recourse. Compounding the issue, workers are often charged exorbitant recruitment fees that they can never repay, further trapping them in debt bondage and forced labor.
Li & Fung is supporting its Indian vendors through technical training and effective production systems like the lean manufacturing concept. Technical experts from Li & Fung’s Bangalore office and Hong Kong trained production team members, supervisors and operators of apparel manufacturing units and export houses at Delhi NCR.
Earlier checkers at export houses would submit a manual report but now after this training and with the use of a tab the report is online and action can be taken immediately on this report. It gives effective results as far as alteration or rejection are concerned.
Though these factories already use the best production practices the training is focused on various areas of improvement as well as minute things, besides emphasizing on energy saving.
Global trading house Li & Fung uses gadgets with specific software to provide training on the above-mentioned subjects and the initiative is expected to boost the efficiency of apparel shop floor and play a key role in increasing apparel sourcing capabilities of Li & Fung as it is associated with renowned apparel exporters of India.
Li & Fung is among the top sourcing and supply chain companies in the world. In April the company divested its three product verticals–furniture, beauty and sweaters–to simplify its business and allow senior management to focus resources on growing the core business of supply chain solutions.
The global jeans retail market is expected to grow by 4.9 per cent in the next five years. Particularly strong growth is expected in developing markets. South America is in the lead with a 12.1 per cent growth rate, while the rest of the world (all markets excluding North America, Europe, Turkey, Asia and South America) is set to increase in value by 19.7 per cent during the period.
The US is predicted to maintain its position as the largest jeans market globally, with China following in second place. Nearly half of China’s jeans production stays inside the country, marking a significant increase from data collected five years prior. Around 22 per cent of the jeans manufactured in China are traded outside of traditional retail markets in exchange for goods or services rather than currency.
The global jeans market benefits from its unique position as a category that has surpassed trends, allowing consumers to buy any jean style they prefer without being out of step with fashion.
Denim jeans are trousers typically made from denim fabric and are a very popular article of casual dress around the world. They come in many styles and colors. Although denim jeans are mostly known as a fashion garment, they are still worn as protective garments by some individuals, such as motorcycle riders, due to their high durability as compared to other common fabrics.
