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The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) plans to set up a federation related to the textile design industry to help fashion entrepreneurs build their future. Its secretary-general Datuk Isham Ishak urged the government and private sector to cooperate inorder to create a bright future for the textile design industry.
Malaysia’s textile and apparel exports amounted to RM15.3 billion in 2017. Also, the Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) approved 12 projects with total investments of RM428.8 million. These projects include the production of primary textiles, ready-to-wear garments and textile accessories and have created 1,850 job opportunities including skilled positions. MIDA in collaboration with Kuala Lumpur Fashion Week and the Malaysian Textile and Apparel Centre also organised the Fashion and Design Conference 2018 recently.
Levi’s has collaborated with Hollywood actor and singer Justin Timberlake on a range called Fresh Leaves. The 20-piece collection has been created by the brand’s design team which worked with Justin to come up with a reinvention of some of the brand’s most iconic pieces.
The collection offers top wear like a long sleeve Camo tee, Barstow western shirt, Sherpa trucker jacket, canvas trucker, Camo hoodie, Sherpa plaid hoodie, a reversible plaid/nylon shirt-jacket. Bottom wear has a New Fit 501 Slim Taper that will be available in four finishes.
As for his debut partnership with Levi’s, Timberlake feels clothes and music create the same impact on a musician’s creative process and performance. This Levi’s collection is his effort to share some of his experiences with fans. As a symbol of trustworthy self-expression, Levi’s has always been worn by musicians along with their fans around the globe. Levi’s is profiting from a wider consumer shift to more casual clothing in the workplace and younger consumers discovering jeans after years of wearing stylish athletic pants. In the United States, Levi’s average male customer is now 32 years old compared with 47 a few years back.
International Apparel and Textile Fair (IATF), the sourcing hub for fabrics, textile, apparels and more, with exhibitors from 14 countries, will hold its 9th edition from November 12–14, 2018 at the Dubai World Trade Centre.
Organised by Nihalani Events Management, the fair will be attended by over 110 exhibitors. IATF will bring together manufacturers and their agents along with some of the most influential buyers and designers to the MENA region. The event will provide an extensive platform to connect and network with industry professionals, create long and promising professional relationship and giving all exhibitors an opportunity to expand their business boundaries.
One of the innovations this year is Incalpaca from Peru which will showcase their alpaca yarn. New and past exhibitors from countries including Turkey, China, Thailand, India, etc will showcase fabric, haute couture and ready-made apparels and garments.
Bangladesh is building a hub for embroidered textiles. Once completed, the hub will accommodate almost 1,200 entrepreneurs while tripling the production of embroidery items in the country. It will feature a warehouse, service and design development centers as well as sales and exhibition center, rest houses, a convention centre and even a theme park. The idea is to build this place not only as a textile hub but also as a tourism hub so that it can draw visitors and can become a major attraction within the region. The hub is expected to help create a bigger market for embroidered textiles while generating more than 3,00,000 additional jobs.
Embroidery forms a big part of Bangladesh’s traditional textile industry. Some of these products are embroidered quilt, traditional embroidered bed covers, wall mats, home decors, readymade garments and other textile items. About a million embroidery pieces are produced in the country annually. The annual output of embroideries may hit three million units by 2025, thanks to the new set-up.
The construction of the hub is expected to be finished by 2023 and it will be spread over 300 acres. It will be one of the biggest projects for the whole textile sector in the country.
"The new acquisition is part of H&M Group’s recent dealings, which, in recent years, has been branching out from just selling pocket friendly garments and accessories. The brand, which, once upon a time was the fastest brands to offer garments and accessories has of late become archaic in comparison to “ultra-fast fashion” entities like Fashion Nova, ASOS, Boohoo and Missguided, which feature new items every week. The group’s shares too have lost nearly two thirds of their value after achieving record highs in 2015. It lagged behind competitors in adoption of e-commerce capabilities and overall approach to merchandising."
H&M, the $26 billion apparel company, second largest in the world, recently launched Afound an off-price luxury site that offers goods from some of the most well-known brands at discounted rates. The site offers a lot of H&M’s own wares such as H&M, Monki, and Cheap Monday labels, accessories from & Other Stories and COS.
Falling market value leads to diversion
The new acquisition is part of H&M Group’s recent dealings, which, in recent years, has been branching out from just selling pocket friendly garments and accessories. The brand, which, once upon a time was the fastest brands to offer garments and accessories has of late become archaic in comparison to “ultra-fast fashion” entities like Fashion Nova, ASOS, Boohoo and Missguided, which feature new items every week. The group’s shares too have lost nearly two thirds of their value after achieving record highs in 2015. It lagged behind competitors in adoption of e-commerce capabilities and overall approach to merchandising.
These losses have compelled the group to not only address its logistical issues, but also broaden the roster by
introducing & Other Stories, COS and Arket, its more up-market (than H&M) apparel companies, and Nyden, its millennial-focused “affordable luxury line,” among others. Afound is the latest addition to the list.
Growth in the off-price market
The $62 billion off-price market is well-established in the US, with roughly 80 per cent of sales taking place there. As per Euromonitor, in Western Europe, sales in the off-price retail market for the five years leading up to 2017 grew nearly 50 per cent; in Eastern Europe, they were up by over 90 per cent. In keeping with this trend, H&M Group launched Afound. The idea was to create an innovative marketplace in the off-price segment.
A winning strategy
H&M through Afound is also planning to adopt strategies similar to those of T.J. Maxx, the off-price retailer which, despite its brick-and-mortar exclusive existence, has recorded remarkable revenues in recent years, in large part, due to its affordable prices and treasure hunt-like experiential shopping.
Afound is also incorporating another winning strategy from its liquidation counterparts: the bait-and-switch. Companies such as T.J. Maxx are known to routinely offer quantities of “it” bags and other high fashion items in order to lure consumers. Once shoppers are in its stores, T.J. Maxx, for instance, can then sell them other products. Afound is using the same strategy, particularly since its H&M Group-branded items significantly outnumber the Gucci and Prada ones.
As of now, Afound is accessible to consumers through two brick-and-mortar stores in Stockholm and Malmö, Sweden, both of which opened in June, and a Swedish-specific e-commerce site, which launched at the same time. The ecommerce site is planning to launch additional stores in Gothenburg, Skärholmen and Kristianstad later this year.
The 16th edition of Maroc in Mode-Maroc Sourcing show will be held from October 11-12, 2018 at Moulay Hassan racetrack in Marrakesh, Morocco. The show will host about 200 exhibitors from fast fashion, denim, knitting, tailoring, lingerie, workwear, leather goods, shoes and accessories segments.
This year’s edition will include the launch of the Circular Textile Cluster, a project focused on the development of sustainable production, an issue many Moroccan enterprises are keen on. The project involves construction of a spinning mill that processes recycled fibers and a recycling plant in Tangier expected to recycle over one million kilograms of textile waste per year. The entire production chain aims to follow sustainable standards starting from the recycling of textile waste.
Among other novelties, the Moroccan Denim Cluster will present a support program aimed at helping denim companies making all the necessary changes to ensure a more sustainable future. Thirty exhibitors participating in the show are members of MDC, which also participates in the Paris textile shows.
An international exhibitor to debut in this edition is Kilim Denim, a Turkish denim manufacturer involved in major investments in sustainable denim production. Among its various past projects was Raw For The Oceans, the innovative denim collection launched by G-Star and made with recycled plastic waste from the sea.
Apparel, footwear and accessories leader VF Corp is selling brand Reef to the Rockport Group. Reef is a shoes and clothing brand rooted in surf culture. It is a powerful brand with deep authenticity and an incredibly loyal customer base.
VF owns brands like Vans, The North Face, Timberland, Wrangler and Lee. VF is in the process of reshaping the brand portfolio to deliver sustainable, long-term growth and superior returns to shareholders. VF Corp recently sold Nautica and picked up performance athletic shoe maker Altra. Prior to that, it acquired Dickies parent Williamson-Dickie and shed its Licensed Sports Group. In 2016, VF closed the sale of its Contemporary Brands business, which included the 7 for All Mankind, Splendid and Ella Moss brands.
Rockport own brands like Rockport, Aravon and Dunham, as well as the Cobb Hill collection. Rockport outfits sailors with high-tech, nautically inspired shoes. Currently, VF Corp employs nearly 70,000 people worldwide with operations across over 170 countries. The company’s Responsible Sourcing program is a global collaborative approach to sourcing products responsibly including collaborating with industry partners and multi-stakeholder organizations across 50 countries.
VF is executing its 2021 growth plan and continuing its journey to reshape the portfolio and transform VF into a purpose-led, performance driven, consumer-centric organization.
As per House of Common’s committee, consumption of new clothes is higher in the UK than any other European country. The committee has written to chief executives of the UK’s 10 leading fashion retailers to find out what steps they are taking to reduce the environmental and social impact of the clothes and shoes they sell.
The companies the Environmental Audit Committee has written to include: Marks & Spencer, Primark, Next Retail, Arcadia Group, Asda, Tk Maxx and HomeSense, Tesco, JD Sports Fashion, Debenhams and Sports Direct International. Westminster’s environmental audit committee said evidence already submitted by the Textiles Recycling Association showed the UK uses 26.7kg per capita. This compares to a consumption rate in the next-highest countries of 16.7 in Germany and 16 in Denmark - and just 12.6 in Sweden.
Although there has been renewed interest in recent years in clothing made in Britain, there are concerns that the demand for fast fashion is fuelling the need for quick turn-around in the supply chain, leading to poor working conditions in UK garment factories.
Union leaders in Bangladesh want a recent hike in garment workers’ basic pay to be revised from 32 per cent to 70 per cent. They say, this will raise other fringe benefits proportionately to make the overall wage sufficient for leading a decent life.
The labor law stipulates basic pay doubles in every wage revision but this does not always happen. The country’s garment industry has some 4.4 million workers. Over 80 per cent of these garment workers are operators. Minimum wages are fixed keeping in mind the number of family members, general wage of the country, living costs, social security benefits, living standards of other social groups, productivity and prices of products.
Unions say garment buyers should keep workers in mind while settling prices and make sure that factory owners deliver this additional amount to workers. Though basic pay is low, and though there is scope for bargaining to increase salaries, union leaders in the industry lack unity.
The concept of a national minimum wage has yet to be established in Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s apparel industry fall behind other centers not only in terms of wages but also of worker well-being. A wage hike disturbs factory owners too. In the past few years, a number of garment manufacturers had to shut their factories as they could not cover their costs.
Istanbul hosted a fashion conference organised by the Turkish Clothing Manufacturers’ Association (TGSD). The Istanbul Fashion Conference, organised for the 11th year, has become an important platform helping the Turkish ready-to-wear sector’s transformation into a global brand.
This year’s theme was: responsible fashion. Some 2,700 liters of water is estimated to be wasted for the production of one t-shirt. Polyester, one of the materials most used in the fashion industry, is insoluble in nature. That contributes to the rise in plastic waste in the oceans. From washing machines they go to the seas, where fishes eat them.
Hadi Karasu, President, TGSD, talked about the growth strategy of the sector. TGSD defined three pillars for a five-year growth strategy: Hot pursuit, branding, sustainability. He believes responsible fashion needs to involve the human factor in addition to the environmental dimension. Informal labor, child labor, and work safety should be part of this understanding.
