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Welspun plans to launch organic Egyptian cotton as a top-of-the-line offering. The home textile giant bought out the 100 metric tons available this season and the plan is to have an even bigger crop next year. To undergird its traceability, Welspun purchases its Egyptian cotton from a single approved vendor in Egypt, and it has moved its yarn and fabric production completely in-house, ending outsourcing. Welspun has also strengthened its third-party verification processes, including by increasing vendor audits. In addition, Welspun receives third party assurance from a New Zealand company, which uses a patented chemical verification process to analyse cotton content and match it to the tract of land where the cotton was grown. Welspun’s Egyptian cotton assortment will include opining price point offerings, products blending Egyptian cotton with performance technologies and/or the company’s proprietary Hygro cotton and temperature-regulating constructions.
Welspun aims at doubling its revenue by 2023. The strategy is to expand its share of branded and innovative products to half of the company’s overall revenues. During the period, the company also wants to completely trim its debt as it will not be needing any significant capital expenditure in future. Welspun has launched the mass market brand of home textiles.
Savio has launched an innovative range of products and high-end technological solutions, including Helios and MultiLink. Helios is a new open-end rotor spinning machine, fully automated which can be also operated manually in both doffing and piecing. Once a machine is restarted after electricity breakdowns, the operator can do piecing manually along with the automatic piecing done by the machine.
The hybrid technology thus means optimum efficiency, minimum nonproductive time to support high flexibility and much shorter payback on investment. The MultiLink connects multiple ring spinning frames to one Savio winder, becoming a tailor-made solution to link multiple spinning frames to one winding machine. A special iPeg tray guarantees the circulation of frames bobbing to and from the winder. This solution optimizes space, reduces energy consumption and production costs. This automatic bobbin transport shortens servicing paths for the operators and allows an ergonomic material flow. The costs of production, space and energy are reduced while keeping the quality consistent even with long and multi-connected machines. This solution provides a wide flexibility making the winder able to process different yarn lots and counts on the same machine.
These innovations are designed at giving customers the maximum flexibility, to reduce energy and labor costs while also increasing productivity during production of the yarn.
Prada’s annual conference on sustainability will be hosted in New York, November 8, 2019. The conference will bring together leaders in academia, institutions, art and industry to discuss some of the most important changes currently taking place in contemporary society. This year’s conference will focus on questions of freedom, equality and justice in the working environment, and more specifically on the nature and impact of ethical assessments in people’s choices and social behavior. The conference, which aims to inspire debate both among attendees and younger generations, will also be live-streamed on Prada’s website.
Italian luxury group Prada began its annual conference series in 2017. The two previous editions were titled ‘Shaping a Creative Future’ and ‘Shaping a Sustainable Digital Future’. This year’s conference is titled ‘Shaping a Sustainable Future Society’.
Prada, founded in 1913, specializes in leather goods such as handbags, shoes, and small fashion accessories which include wallets, pouches and belts, with a range of ready-to-wear items like shirts, jackets and knits. Sales had risen in 2018 for the first time in four years helped by a new strategy aimed at rejuvenating the brand which focused on renovating shops, new products and digital sales. Improving full-price sales and a solid growth in its wholesale channel offset the impact of a move to cut back on markdowns.
Max&Co has had an in-depth makeover. Bright colors, like the red featured in the new logo of the contemporary line by Max Mara have been added. A coral red is now found in the background of the logo’s lettering in black capitals, adding a burst of energy to Max&Co.'s packaging and labels.
Max&Co has also refreshed its style and introduced a new store concept. The brand was launched as a retail label in 1986, at a time of great dynamism and change. Its market positioning is more democratic and contemporary than that of its main brand Max Mara. The idea was to create a style suitable for contemporary women, featuring functional, everyday clothes that are easy to wear. From this starting point, the label has a clearer direction, putting more emphasis on product quality.
The collection has been streamlined, concentrating on Max&Co’s key items like tops and coats, aiming for a very specific look. The line targets women of any age and provenance, and its style is now closer to the latest fashion trends. For example, it includes a series of uber-comfortable sneaker-socks in dazzling colors like fluorescent green, pink and red. The classic woolen coat, a signature Max&Co item, is now available in different models.
India’s exports of leather and leather products dipped four per cent in July 2019. Incentives will be provided to the leather sector with a view to boosting exports from this labor intensive segment. The entitlement rate for leather garment sector for duty-free imports of raw material may be increased from three per cent to five per cent. The move would help in increasing the availability of raw materials at affordable rates and boosting exports. Also, GST on footwear priced above Rs 1,000 may be reduced from 18 per cent to 12 per cent. This is expected to help enhance the competitiveness of the products in global markets. Similarly, GST on raw material for the leather sector may be reduced to 12 per cent from 18 per cent.
Major export destinations for Indian leather and leather products are: Europe and the US. The sector employs about 42 lakh people. The footwear sub-sector accounts for half of India’s leather exports. The leather garment sub-sector produces 16 million pieces a year and accounts for one-tenth of exports. Other products such as articles (wallets, handbags), industrial gloves, harness and saddlery account for a quarter of exports. US companies have turned to leather from India. They have been hit by tariffs on products imported from China.
India’s exports of cotton yarn between April and June 2019 were 35 per cent lower than last year’s exports for the same period. China used to consume 40 per cent of Indian cotton but not anymore. Chinese spinners buy domestic yarn, which is cheaper than India’s. Also, India has to bear a 3.5 per cent import duty while selling to China unlike Vietnam that doesn’t have to.
Up to 50 to 60 per cent fiber that is used in producing yarn in India is cotton, and India is among the largest producers of cotton in the world. But there has been an increase in the minimum support price of cotton by 25 per cent to 28 per cent while prices have fallen sharply in the global market. So the production cost of yarn has gone up in India and Indian prices are now not viable in the international market.
One reason for the liquidity crisis was demonetization, believes Mukesh Tyagi, Senior VP of the Northern India Textile Mills’ Association, or NITMA. The cash flow in the textile market was disrupted. GST also happened. Because earlier there was no tax on fabric, many decentralised sectors in the textile industry had to adjust with the new tax regime.
Imprinted Sportswear Shows (ISS), owned and operated by Emerald Expositions, a leading operator of business-to-business trade shows in the United States, will now be known as Impressions Expo. The Impressions Expo brand reflects the ISS brand’s alignment with Impressions magazine, a leading B2B publication canvassing the decorated-apparel industry and longtime ISS sponsor. The goal is to provide attendees with authoritative, informational content, trade show interactions and award-winning conferences that are benchmarks of both prestigious brands.
The new name is meant to better reflect what the show is about and not just sportswear. Events will continue to showcase the same product categories with a name that now encompasses the entire decorated-apparel industry, from raw goods/ fabrics to the finished, packaged product. There is no change in the show or the core markets it serves. It will continue to be dedicated to the garment and non-wearable decorating professionals seen at all its events today and embrace the evolution in technology, products and services of both new and old needed by attendees as they relate to the decorating process.
This transition will start with the trade show in California, January 17 to 19, 2020. Among the product categories are screen printing, embroidery, direct-to-garment printing, blank apparel, sublimation, heat transfers, product packaging, promotional products and more.
Innovation hubs Fashion for Good and The Mills Fabrica have teamed up with the C&A Foundation to launch an investment fund that will spearhead systemic change in the apparel and footwear supply chain.
Apparel supply chains are plagued by negative environmental and social impacts. Sustainable solutions exist but there is a lack of capital available to scale technologies up in the supply chain. The fund will address this gap, connecting most promising technologies to the industry. The immediate aim is to provide loans to allow suppliers in India, Bangladesh and Vietnam to invest in new technology that will deliver economic growth and good practice. This will help textile and footwear manufacturers in those countries start using safe and recyclable materials, clean and efficient energy and closed-loop manufacturing practices. It will also help them establish a fairer work environment for the people they employ. The fund demonstrates how to invest beyond sustainability towards a restorative and regenerative apparel supply chain. It addresses the need in local markets for long-term financing for manufacturers.
Small and medium manufacturers who are committed to meeting these criteria are eligible for funding. The fund will also support larger manufacturers committed to investing in highly disruptive technologies, which means ideas that can quickly bring about substantial changes in the supply chain.
Indian apparel exports are burdened with duties in the EU and US markets. These blunt the country’s competitive edge. Now that Vietnam has signed a free trade agreement with the EU, which enables apparel exports at zero duty, Indian exports to these markets will be impacted adversely.
Over the years, Indian apparel exports have been in distress and survived largely due to export incentives. While these incentives have proved partially useful, they have not helped Indian apparel manufacturers compete on price with their competitors. Some Indian apparel makers feel they can shift their existing manufacturing to Vietnam and Bangladesh to benefit from tariff arbitrage, labor laws, low wages, conducive business environment and, hence, better return on capital employed. Employment ratios in apparels are far more attractive than in agriculture or automobiles. The man-machine ratio in apparels is far better than farmers to cultivable land ratio, which has fallen significantly over the years. In the automobile sector, too, for every crore revenue earned a company generates 0.45 jobs, while for an apparel manufacturer, a crore earned in revenue creates 18.5 jobs.
The apparel industry is the country’s largest low technology employer after agriculture, with 45 million workers contributing two per cent to the GDP and 15 per cent to export earnings.
Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, Inc, the leading developer of spider silk based fibers, recently announced that its CEO, Kim Thompson was recognised as one of MyTechMag magazine’s top 20 pioneering CEO’s of 2019.
In selecting the top 20 pioneering CEO’s of 2019, MyTechMag selection criteria included a review of the complexity of the challenges overcome, the growth of the underlying business, and the CEO’s ability to harness their team’s potential.
