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Global unions IndustriALL and UNI have announced that more than 100 brands have joined the new Accord on Fire and Building Safety. Valter Sanches, General Secretary of IndustriALL Global Union says the brands that have signed the 2018 Transition Accord are showing a commitment to transparency and to the safety of Bangladeshi workers. The Accord’s legally-binding framework is the only credible way to guarantee that life-threatening fire and structural hazards are remediated in a timely manner in ready-made garment and textile factories.”
Since the new Accord was announced in June, over 101 brands have come on-board, including Adidas, Benetton, Carrefour, H&M, New Look, Esprit, Hugo Boss, Inditex, Tesco and John Lewis. Thus the agreement covers more than 1,200 factories and around 2 million workers.
Christy Hoffman, Deputy General Secretary of UNI Global Union was happy with the way things are turning out and is confident the vast majority of 2013 signatories would sign the 2018 Transition Accord and now that they have broken 100 signatories. Hoffman says they made improvements to the industry and turning away now simply doesn’t make sense. It is also important to make these advancements in worker safety sustainable through functioning Health and Safety Committees and the Transition Accord will put a priority on this work.
Last month, an unnamed apparel brand was forced to come to a $2.3 million settlement to mitigate safety hazards in factories. The funds will be used to improve working conditions in 150 factories and to support IndustriALL and UNI Global’s workers’ fund.
Kristina Jensen, PRPS women’s account executive disclosed PRPS is adding a bit of stretch to its premium Japanese denim collection. The amount is marginal at around 1.5 to 2 per cent but delivers just enough give while maintaining the brand’s DNA. The well-known denim label is also launching its first-ever collection made in Italy for fall. The capsule features Japanese fabrics designed and stitched in Italy with new cuts demanded by the European markets, including straight and wide leg crop. The collection is expected to retail for $248-$448.
Levi’s Made & Crafted presented its largest collection, including a wide range of button-down shirts and hoodies. For Fall ’18, Levi’s welcomes the addition of the 501 and 511 for men and the 700 series for women. Ingrid Rodriguez, Royal Workshop Chief of Operations, said designing in the confines of what’s available in large quantities forces a higher level of creativity. The brand sources bulk vintage goods from warehouses and reintroduces pieces with chain fringe and Tiffany rhinestone settings.
Other styles are hybrids, such as the vintage Levi’s jacket with an elongated military camp fabric bottom. The brand will start looking outside the 50 states for the same. Australian label Outland Denim made its US debut at Liberty Fairs with prices around $200, the men’s and women’s denim collection targets the premium luxury market. Founder James Bartle proudly says, the biggest point of difference from other brands is that they have a story.
Turkey-based mill Calik made its second appearance at this Liberty show. Calik showcased Athfeat, a collection of athleisure jeans, leggings and jackets made with its Fly Jean concept. The garments were created by Turkish designer Ozak Tekstil. Fly Jeans use Invista’s Lycra fibre, Coolmax and Thermolite IR to create true performance-driven denim. The lightweight fabric keeps the wearer cool, dry or warm without bulk, offers excellent shape retention and has a creamy soft touch while maintaining the authentic look and wash down of denim.
Product Innovation (PI) Apparel, the fashion industry’s premiere technology conference, was held recently. The event is well-known as a place where industry disrupters team up to learn latest trends in fashion technology, brainstorm, share their experiences adopting fashion technology and discuss ways to ensure how fashion technology can be or better implemented.
Stephanie Kleinjan, Owner of Socialite Clothing (a Los Angeles-based apparel brand), discussed her experience, successes and teachings from integrating 3D virtual sample-making into a fast-fashion business model. Using Tukatech’s TUKA3D application with real-time motion simulation for fit and design analysis, the design team at Socialite built a season’s worth of styles virtually before cutting and sewing physical garments. They draped the garments on virtual fit models, examined tension maps that reveal where the cloth is tight or loose, following which they showcased the styles in different colorways to buyers and designers.
Ram Sareen, Tukatech’s Founder, and an industry disrupter said, TUKA3D brings brands and designers to the next level. They can reduce production time by months, saving money and beating others to market.
Tukatech is the garment and apparel industry's leading provider of fashion design software and technology solutions. Founded in 1995 by Sareen, Tukatech offers award-winning 2D pattern making, grading and marker making software, automated marker making software, 3D sample making/virtual prototyping software, as well as garment plotters, automatic spreaders and cutters for production.
Czech textile and clothing companies last year showcased their best results in the past 12 years. Data from a survey carried out by the Czech Association of Textile, Clothing and Leather Industries (ATOK) 2017 records companies sold fibres, textiles and clothing valued at 55.3 billion crowns. This was largely due to the fast growing economy and focus on technical textiles, which are used in the automobile industry, agriculture, health care and aviation. The head of the Czech Association of Textile, Clothing and Leather Industries, Jiří Česal points out. The growth suggests a close interconnection between the textile industry and other fields. It is clearly driven by the auto industry which uses textiles for the production of many of its components.
Currently, technical textiles make up two thirds of global textile production and experts say their significance will continue to grow. Česal says seven out of the country’s top 10 textile producers manufacture technical textile. The Czech Republic’s leading producer is Juta, which produces unwoven textiles for the building industry and agriculture, followed by nappies producer Pegas Nonwovens.
As per a study by Czech Association of Textile, Clothing and Leather Industry, Textile and Clothing Associations last year recruited new employees and increased their salaries. Wages increased by over seven per cent, with workers in textile companies achieving an average wage of 24,000 crowns.
Just like in other fields, however, Czech textile and clothing companies are facing a serious lack of workers. Earlier, Czechoslovakia was a textile and clothing industry power, but in the 1990s many of the country’s companies went bankrupt following cheap imports from Asia.
Circle Economy has officially launched the Fibersort Project which uses innovative technology to automatically sort large volumes of mixed post-consumer textiles based on fibre composition. Along with project partners Valvan Baling Systems, Reshare, Procotex, Worn Again and Smart Fibersorting, the organisation will soon undertake testing on the sorted materials and the results will be disclosed in future Fibersort reports. A ‘Demo Day’ has been scheduled for March 14th to showcase Fibersort’s technology at work and to share performance information with the industry for the first time. The event will also have project partners host workshops to gain an in-depth understanding of systemic issues around recycled textiles.
The project partners give out figures which show of all textiles discarded in Northwest Europe, only 30 per cent are collected and almost half of the collected items are only fit to be downcycled, landfilled or incinerated. The Fibersort Project hopes to give them a chance to become inputs for textile-to-textile recycling.
The Fibersort technology, funded by Interreg NWE, is now in operation and the first Fibersorted materials are now commercially available. The project aims to reduce the need for virgin textile materials by providing feedstock more efficiently for textile-to-textile recycling and creating additional market value by making it economically feasible to sort textile waste. Cyndi Rhoades, CEO, Worn Again explains, Fibersort will enable suppliers of post-consumer textiles to meet the feedstock specification for our process more efficiently than today’s sorting methods. The results of the Fibersort are looking promising.
The Brazilian office of C&A Foundation, Instituto C&A, is launching a “call for proposals” to find innovative initiatives to bring about systematic change in working conditions in Brazil’s fashion industry. C&A said as consumers become increasingly aware of the conditions in which fashion is made, demand for greater transparency has increased. Numerous brands and industry groups have begun to publicly disclose information such as the names and locations of suppliers they work with, working conditions and related safety information.
Giuliana Ortega, Executive Director of Instituto C&A announced, “We are looking for innovative ways to improve working conditions in the fashion industry in Brazil. Transparency can contribute a great deal by disseminating reliable and publicly accessible information and by encouraging accountability, making working conditions a priority in the sector.”
Transparency will only contribute to improving working conditions when publicly disclosed information is used to encourage accountability, C&A further said. With access to relevant data and information, stakeholders at all stages in the value chain can make choices that will improve conditions for garment workers.
The initial budget available for the call for proposals is $4,00,000, with a maximum of about $1,80,000 for each proposal, with up to three proposals to be chosen. Instituto C&A said a complex maze of production units, subcontracted factories and sourcing agents has emerged across various countries, including Brazil. Multiple stages between material sourcing, production and retail make the apparel supply chain opaque and leads to a complex international apparel industry where monitoring and tracing is challenged at all levels of production from the fields of cotton fields through to retail outlets.
The lack of transparency in the system has contributed to persistently poor working conditions and weak systems of accountability. Brands, buyers, governments and consumers are often unaware of how materials are sourced and the conditions under which items are produced. To address transparency in the fashion industry supply chain, the initiatives presented should develop or implement projects that give out public, accurate and credible sources of information and data on issues that directly or indirectly affect working conditions.
Fespa will be held in Germany from May 15 to 18. This is a wide format, screen printing and textile printing event. Visitors will see printed interior decor applications including furniture, wall coverings, flooring, window graphics and soft furnishings.
This year’s event will have an entire hall dedicated to substrates and will also feature the largest textile zone of any Fespa event to date to reflect the market’s growing interest in soft signage, fashion and decorative textiles.
New this year is Print Make Wear, an interactive visitor feature designed to replicate a fast fashion factory. Focused exclusively on fashion textiles, garments and printed accessories, this feature takes the form of a live production environment and will highlight every step in the screen and digital printing production process, from initial design to finished product.
Also new for 2018 is the Digital Corrugated Experience, which is an educational and experiential area that will showcase the commercial and production advantages of digital print for corrugated packaging and retail display applications. This feature aims to highlight to packaging converters and box-makers the benefits of integrating digital technology into their production mix.
The show will be co-located once again with European Sign Expo, Fespa’s dedicated event for non-printed signage.
Vietnam is signing a free trade agreement with the EU this year. When implemented, it would become one of the most ambitious and comprehensive investment agreements to be signed between the European Union and a developing country. Vietnamese enterprises can get access to a market with a population of more than 500 million people and a GDP which accounts for 22 per cent of global GDP. In return, EU investors can explore a market that has the most rapid economic growth in the region with a population of more than 90 million people. The FTA will contribute about 2.5 per cent to Vietnam’s GDP in 2020 and 4.6 per cent in 2025.
Vietnam is now a benchmark for the other Asean countries that are willing to engage in FTA negotiations with the EU. Vietnam’s exports of textiles and garments rose 10 per cent this year compared to last year. In 2017, its exports of garment products to the US were 9.4 per cent higher than in 2016.
Meanwhile a denim and sportswear supply chain show will be held in Vietnam, June 27 to 28, 2018. This is the third edition of the show.
Knitwear industrialists from Tirupur have been invited to invest in a textile cluster to be formed in UP. As a part of two-day program, Mrityunjay Kumar Narayan, Secretary to UP chief minister, and Sunil Yadav, Assistant Director, Handloom and Textiles, visited garment manufacturing units at Nethaji apparel park in New Tirupur and other places. Ahead of the UP Investors Summit, to be held on February 21-22, the representatives presented their offers to interested industrialists.
Uttar Pradesh is the seventh state to send its representatives. Earlier, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and Odisha have sent their representatives to woo the industrialists.
UP’s offers support in capital and machinery investments and transportation expenditures, tax benefits, employee provident fund and employee state insurance were found to be attractive. The UP government team said they have planned to have special purpose vehicle (SPV) and textile parks to establish needed infrastructure, says Shashi Agarwal, joint secretary of Sihma.
Industrialists have been invited to participate in their state’s investors’ summit. They may even have further visits here, if needed. Since Tirupur has attained saturation point in the knitwear business is facing labour shortage and other issues, the industrialists may look for investment options in states like UP. However, industrialists have admitted there is no significant migration of such investments in any of the states which were trying to attract the textile sector investments from Tamil Nadu.
S Govindappan, VP, Sihma says even if those states provide attractive investment offers, it would not be more difficult to get either skilled labour force or raw materials or processing units there. For instance, the Karnataka government was trying to lure industrialists to set up units in an industrial estate in Chamarajanagar district on Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border, there were no takers.
Bangladesh’s sweater exports to the western world are rising because of competitive prices and longer winters due to climate change. Exports in fiscal 2016-17 were up 5.64 per cent year-on-year. Three years ago, the window for sweater sales was at the most four months, from November to February. However, now, the window opens in October and continues until March.
The shift of work orders from China to Bangladesh is also another factor for the higher shipment, which exports nearly three million pieces a year. Knitwear is no longer confined to winter and is worn year round.
Given the higher demand, most factories have started automating their production line to boost output and cope with strict lead times. Recently, Vietnam and Cambodia have become major competitors due to their shorter lead times. The lead time from Bangladesh is around 40 days, whereas it is 20 days from the other two Asian nations. Bangladesh has more than 500 sweater factories in operation and nearly 60 per cent of these have switched over to automation to ramp up productivity. Prices of sweaters dropped and customers placed more orders in the jacquard category. An automated jacquard machine is not only able to produce diversified and fashionable products, but can also fabricate critical designs.
