"The RMG sector in Bangladesh has witnessed tremendous growth over the last one decade. The country has emerged as the second largest RMG exporter to the world with around 85 per cent of its export earnings achieved through this sector. This growth in the country’s RMG sector has created many new employment opportunities in the country with around 4 million Bangladeshi people currently being employed in the sector reveals an exclusive study by Wazir Analysis and Textile Magazine."

The RMG sector in Bangladesh has witnessed tremendous growth over the last one decade. The country has emerged as the second largest RMG exporter to the world with around 85 per cent of its export earnings achieved through this sector. This growth in the country’s RMG sector has created many new employment opportunities in the country with around 4 million Bangladeshi people currently being employed in the sector reveals an exclusive study by Wazir Analysis and Textile Magazine.

The textile and apparel exports of Bangladesh increased at a CAGR of 8 per cent from $25 billion in 2012 to $36 billion in 2017. The country, which enjoys preferential access in the European Union (EU) under the ‘Everything but Arms’ (EBA), gained around 61 per cent market share in the region for textile products. Other than the EU and US, Japan and Russia are the other flourishing countries with their market share growing at a CAGR of 36 per cent and 28 per cent, respectively. Through its export competitiveness and duty free access, Bangladesh has attracted many international brands in recent years, reveals the study. The country’s apparel exports have grown at a CAGR of 14 per cent since 2005. These are further likely to grow at a CAGR of 12.5 per cent to reach $100 billion by 2025.

Fragmented textile value chain hampers growth

The Wazir Analysis and Textile Magazine study also reveals, Bangladesh faces many challenges that affect its export growth. Firstly, the country has a fragmented textile value chain which is highly dependent on import of raw material for textile and apparel commodities. Also, issues like increasing wages, lower output, low product quality, etc plague export growth in the country. To counter these issues and remain competitive in the global market, Bangladesh needs to focus on the following aspects:

Integration of operations to enhance market power, position

Backward & forward integration could help Bangladesh companies to control not only their buyers but also their suppliers, distributors and customers. It can also enhance their market power and position, reduce import of fabric and yarn and internal consumption of products, increase value-addition at all stages of the textile value chain, reduce in costs, lead times, increase employment avenues for local population and better margins for the manufacturers.

Dealing with quality, design and delivery issues

Another area that Bangladesh needs to focus on is offering superior quality products with innovative designs, customisation, on-time delivery, technology innovations and after-sales service. This can be achieved through major transitions in manufacturing set-up and workforce development. The main components of this transition include Streamlined manufacturing process can help Bangladesh deliver high variety, low volume orders

Reducing mishaps through concepts like Right First Time, Zero Defect, Quality Control can help the country to improve its products and processes Operaters need to take ownership of their equipment and also simply their processes to increase their capacity and also improve the quality of their offerings.

The manufacturing units should adopt information systems like Business Process Management (BPM) to improve their capacity. They should also involve their employees in their production processes

Companies need to adopt market intelligence to keep up with the latest trends and developments along with competitor analysis. They need to introduce low-volume high fashion products. They also need to create a proper work culture in their companies by training their labor as well as middle management.

Lastly, Bangladeshi apparel manufacturers should focus on catering to the demand of Indian market which is expected to grow at 12 per cent CAGR by 2025.

"Kornit Digital, global market leader in digital textile printing innovation, will commercially launch the new Kornit Presto, the only industrial single-step solution for direct-to-fabric printing at ITMA 2019. The Kornit Presto solution eliminates the need for pre and post treatment of fabric and allows for high-quality printing on an extraordinarily broad variety of fabric types and applications."

Kornit Digital, global market leader in digital textile printing innovation, will commercially launch the new Kornit Presto, the only industrial single-step solution for direct-to-fabric printing at ITMA 2019. The Kornit Presto solution eliminates the need for pre and post treatment of fabric and allows for high-quality printing on an extraordinarily broad variety of fabric types and applications. The Kornit Presto does not consume water in the printing process, making it the most environmentally friendly solution available for direct-to-fabric textile printing today.

The new Kornit Presto comes with the ground-breaking NeoPigment Robusto, the best Pigment-based ink available in the Industry. Implemented into the renowned Kornit NeoPigmentTM process, the Robusto provides above industry standard wash and rub results and exceptional color fastness across a wide fabric and application range. The Robusto enjoys faster physical and chemical bonding characteristics, enabling a significantly shorter curing time, while providing industry-leading quality and a wide color gamut. The NeoPigment Robusto ink was developed with sustainability priorities and is ECO PASSPORT and GOTS V5 approved.

The Kornit Presto solution suits a wide range of business and application needs in a variety of industry segments, including fast growing segments within the on-demand fashion and home décor markets. It is a highly productive solution, available in multiple configurations and able to print 450 square meters per hour.

Imogo, a Swedish company involved in textile processing technology will launch its new Dye-Max spray dyeing technology at ITMA 2019 in Barcelona.

While still at the prototype stage, and with a first full-scale line currently under construction and due to be demonstrated this Autumn before delivery, the DyeMax nevertheless promises to slash the use of fresh water, waste water, energy and chemicals by as much as 90 per cent compared to conventional jet dyeing systems.

Spray cassettes: Its application unit consists of a closed chamber containing a series of spray cassettes with precision nozzles for accurate and consistent coverage, in combination with the patented imogo pro speed valve that controls the volume to be applied. The chamber is equipped with an exhaust system and droplet separator to ensure that the environment around the unit is free from particles.

There is one set of spray cassettes for each of the three separate dye dispersion feed lines and they can be easily exchanged without the need for tools in less than a minute. This allows for extremely fast changeovers between different colours without the need for cleaning.

Mini-Max: With the Mini-Max it is possible to run miniature production tests to set the precise colour recipe. This frees up valuable production time by avoiding wasteful pre-runs. The user simply sets the recipe with the Mini-Max and transfers the parameters to the Dye-Max recipe database for the system to be fully production ready.

In the last quarter Welspun’s sales growth has slowed down to three per cent. Growth in profits before depreciation, interest and tax margin is at a wafer-thin 1.8 per cent. Welspun India buys its Egyptian cotton from a single vendor in that country, moving the rest of the processes of producing yarn and fabric fully in-house, ending outsourcing. The company has also rolled out a patented system for tracking its cotton textiles products to their origins, involving multiple audits by consultants. It also tied up with Oritain, a company that specialises in tracing cotton back to the tract of land on which it is grown.

The Welspun group spans textile exports, steel pipes and infrastructure. In 2003, it launched Spaces, a branded towel and bed sheet brand with a premium positioning. New mass market textile products have been launched for the local market under the Welspun brand. The domestic market contributes around nine per cent of Welspun’s sales. Welspun is making disposable towels and wet wipes out of non-woven textiles. There are other applications of non-woven textiles the company wants to address in automobiles and the aviation industry as well. Another big bet is on flooring material. Alongside there are plans for carpet tiles and artificial grass.

Vietnamese fondness for fast fashion led to a big jump in Zara’s revenues to VND 1.7 trillion ($73 million) last year, six times the 2016 figure. The Spanish company has only two stores in Vietnam – in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City – yet local brands like Tam Son Fashion and Mai Son International Retail are trailing far behind. Its products have been distributed by Indonesia's Mitra Adiperkasa Group since it ventured into the country in 2016. However, despite the rapid increase in its revenues, pre-tax profits of Zara Vietnam were a mere VND98 billion ($4.22 million), or 6 percent of revenues, since selling expenses are high.

Statistics Portal, a German market analysis firm, has forecast the compounded annual growth rate of the Vietnamese fashion industry in 2017-2022 will be 22.5 percent. A survey by Nielsen last year found that clothes were Vietnamese consumers’ third spending priority after food and saving. The survey also shows Vietnam ranks third globally in the number of people fond of branded goods after only China and India.

US fashion retailers are suffering since the trade war with China escalated. Most of these fashion retailers work with factories in China, and investors are worried about tariffs pushing up their costs. They are struggling to retain customers in the face of intensifying competition. The sector has fared far worse than tech, chip and automaker stocks.

J. Jill, the women’s clothing and accessories retailer, saw a 3.3 per cent decline in first-quarter same-store sales. Its share price has plunged 83 per cent cumulatively over the last year. The retailer expects a two to four per cent drop in same-store sales for the full fiscal year. Gap’s same-store sales fell four per cent in the first quarter. It expects full-year same-store sales to contract further. A&F’s same-store sales rose by one per cent in the first quarter, far below the nine per cent growth in the same period of last year. Its share price has plunged by 43 per cent over the last month. Americans spent 1.3 per cent less on apparel last year. It was the only category that reported a decline among all consumer products. Millennials in America spend around 18 per cent less on clothing than those born in 1960s and 1970s.

Tintex Textiles will participate in the upcoming United Nations Global Compact initiative - a voluntary leadership platform for the development, implementation and disclosure of responsible business practices. This forum will feature expertly controlled processing, and advanced dyeing and finishing solutions that drive material innovation to create responsible supply chains to transform fashion systems.

The Tintex Department of Sustainability optimises fashion solutions that not only provide high performance nature based textiles, but enable Tintex to arise as global leaders striving toward superior responsible fashion systems that are transparent and fully traceable throughout the supply chain. Constantly striving for a responsible change in the textile industry, Tintex concretely contributes to a more stable and inclusive global market. It aims to achieve qualitatively better and less impactful results to implement a structured strategical plan that foresees innovative approach, smart sourcing and ongoing research and development continuous experimentation, shared and interconnected internal actions and the ability to move and to react faster to the market needs.

South Africa is fighting to revive its frayed clothing industry. It was once a crucial provider of jobs but a flood of cheap imports is forcing factories to lay off workers. It was once the economic lifeblood of many small regional towns, but the abundance of cheaper products from China has led to the loss of nearly two-thirds of the sector’s jobs over the past two decades. Fast fashion retailers, which largely source their products from outside South Africa, have aggressively expanded in the country, denting sales of locally-made garments. The key obstacle to this sector is an inability to develop niche markets. South Africa is not a low cost producer. The main aim of the South African textile and clothing industry is to use all the natural, human and technological resources at its disposal to make it the preferred international supplier of textiles and apparel. Although the industry is small, it is well placed to make this vision a reality.

Tariffs were one of a series of tools used to assist the industry but they don’t provide a long-term competitive advantage. South Africa is now exploring options such as technology acquisition and skill development in niche areas as a first response to industry development.

Exporters in Tirupur feel schemes like the MEIS (Merchandise Exports of India Scheme) are necessary till such time as free trade agreements, say, with the EU, are signed. They are reacting to a viewpoint that industry and export councils should stop depending on crutches of subsidies and grants and strive to be self-reliant on their own. They feel scrapping subsidies given to the readymade garment sector will lead to reduction of their competitiveness in the global market and that once buyers leave a country and settle in with a competing country it would be very difficult to bring them back.

Nearly 80 per cent of knitwear garment exporting units in Tirupur are small and medium sized units. They face higher logistics cost and increasing wages compared to competing countries are deterrent factors in enhancing their competitiveness. They feel subsidies like MEIS offset infrastructural inefficiencies and provide a level playing field.

India competes with the likes of Bangladesh, Vietnam, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, which enjoy duty free status in the European Union. The garment sector in India provides employment to the downtrodden and 60 per cent of workers are women. The fortunes of cotton farmers are also linked to this industry.

Designers are playing with smart fabrics. Beyond being performance efficient, smart fabrics are fashion forward in their essence. Illuminating a clean and comforting fit and look, they also incorporate ample amount of smart features that deal with more intrinsic and traditional uses of clothing. One instance of this is to keep one warm with the use of a power source and conductive components in the fabric itself. Actual smart fabrics have conductors and circuits devices that can sense a number of inputs, including touch, temperature, vibrations etc. In addition, they can interact with external devices such as smart phones using wi-fi, essentially making them devices that can be worn on the body.

Designers around the globe spend generous time and effort into curating astounding designs and creations that become the eye-catching trends for years to come. And the connotation ‘smart’ doesn’t necessary fall under technology, but components that have been in existence in the world for quite a while now, especially in sports. Ralph Lauren’s smart e-textile T-shirt for one can monitor breathing, heart rate and stress. Nor is it only about fashion. Anti-molestation and anti-rape clothing is made possible by incorporating smart fabric, thus taking a stance against sexual assault or any other crime against women.