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To raise capital for its entry into the North African market and expand East African operations, Apparel maker Hela Clothing plans to launch an initial public offering on the Colombo Stock Exchange within the next 12 months. As per Bloomberg Quint, the Sri Lanka-based manufacturer for PVH Corp will offload 20 per cent stake for $20 million. It manufactures underwear, sleepwear and children’s apparel. It will enter the North African nation Egypt by the first quarter of 2022. This will help the company boost its value by 11 per cent to $250 million by the end of the financial year in March, says Dilanka Jinadasa, CEO.
Hela also plans to expand its intimates business in Kenya and boost the capacity of bra-making factory in Ethiopia. The company generates nearly 60 per cent of its revenue outside Sri Lanka.
Indonesia-based viscose staple fibre producer Asia Pacific Rayon (APR) is aligning operations with the industry’s best practice and standards. As per Textile Today, the company, which holds PEFC chain of custody certification, is using 100 per cent certified dissolving wood pulp, ensuring that the forest-based material contained in a product originates from sustainably managed plantations.
The APR facility also has ISO and Step by OEKO-TEX® certification, which confirms APR’s production processes and facilities have been comprehensively assessed and verified by independent third parties to have met all relevant standards, in terms of chemical management, environmental management and performance, social responsibility, quality, and workplace safety. APR has also added a number of product level certifications in the first two years of operations. These include the USDA Biobased, OEKO-TEX® STD 100; OEKO_TEX® Made in Green Label; Medically tested for skin compatibility, Seedling and DIN-Geprüft industrial compostable certifications.
The USDA bio-based certification confirms that APR’s products are 100 per cent plant-based, while the OEKO-TEX® STD 100 certificate states that APR’s products have been tested for harmful substances and that they are harmless to human health.
The Made in Green Label provides an added layer of assurance, transparency, and product confidence that customers expect, as it verifies that an article has been tested for harmful substances and guarantees that the fibre has been manufactured using sustainable processes under environmentally friendly and socially responsible working conditions.
The latest certificates confirm the biodegradability of APR’s fibres in fresh water and soil. The tests for the certifications were carried out by independent research laboratory Organic Waste Systems and, as a result, APR’s viscose staple fibres have been awarded the international OK biodegradability WATER and OK biodegradability SOIL labels by accredited certification board, TUV Austria.
In its bid to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), United Kingdom recently launched negotiations with of its 11 member countries. The partnership will give UK exporters and services firms better access to these markets. It will increase UK exports to these countries by £37 billionby 2030.
Joining the free trade area would boost growth and support British jobs. These benefits would increase over time, with the Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan and the Republic of Korea all having expressed interest in joining.
UK negotiating teams will be working over the coming months to ensure a good deal for businesses, producers and consumers across Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Membership would lower tariffs on key British exports like cars and whisky in industries employing hundreds of thousands of people and should mean tariff-free trade for 99.9 per cent of UK exports.
The deal should also benefit British farmers. With CPTPP countries set to account for 25 per cent of global import demand for meat by the end of the decade, joining would support farmers selling high-quality produce like beef and lamb into fast-growing markets like Mexico, the release said.
Lavie’s digital first sustainable brand Qisa, which launched on Flipkart this month, will sell handbags and slings and target college students and young professionals.
As per Ayush Tainwala, CEO, Bagzone Lifestyle, the range will bridge the gap between sustainability and affordable fashion. Qisa’s designs will be made accessible to Gen Y & Gen Z women across the country. Flipkart’s collaboration with the brand will bring enormous value to the fashion-conscious customers who are also looking for the affordability factor. With deep integration with its partners, Flipkart continuously identifies opportunities for them and helps them connect with consumers across India through its online marketplace, scale their online presence and aid in business growth. Alongside this, the e-tailer aims to continuously strengthen its partnerships and bridge the gap between customers in metros and Tier-II+ towns.
Fashion chain Primark has launched a new range of skinny jeans made from discarded plastic. As per Textile Today, the range has been launched in partnership with material innovators Unifi, Inc and its Repreve Our Ocean fibre, as a part of the Primark Cares’ range.
The skinny jeans have a high waist fit with a let-down hem and are available in two classic colourwashes, light-blue and mid-blue, in UK sizes 4-20.
The jeans feature a blend of a unique recycled fabric made from plastic bottles, which have been collected from land within 50 km of the coastline, one of the biggest sources of plastic pollution in our oceans.
From there, bottles are ground and melted into pellets before being spun into the innovative polyester fibre. The Primark x Repreve Our Ocean jeans are made using 33 percent Repreve Our Ocean polyester, which is then blended with 58 percent cotton, 7 percent viscose and 2 percent elastane to create a comfortable stretch fit. Primark’s partnership with Repreve Our Ocean is the latest launch from the
Primark Cares label, which features a wide range of products made with recycled fibres or more sustainably sourced materials. In May, the fast-fashion retailer launched a sustainable leisurewear capsule collection in partnership with Recover. Primark currently has more than 390 stores, with over 16.5 million square foot of selling space, across 13 countries – the Republic of Ireland, the UK, Spain, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, France, the US, Italy, Slovenia and Poland.
Nike’s fourth-quarter revenue nearly doubled, topping $12 billion for the first time and overshadowing a weaker-than-anticipated performance in its fast-growing China market.
A rapid vaccination drive and the easing of restrictions in Europe and the United States have encouraged people to go on a shopping spree, unleashing demand for expensive items, including sneakers.
Those factors helped Nike more than make up for weak China sales, which were hit by calls to boycott global brands for their comments around forced labor in Xinjiang.
Still, analysts are optimistic of a swift demand rebound in the region as company executives noted that sales trends in China for June were already reaching 2020 levels.
At least 13 brokerages raised their price targets, with Stifel's $213 target the highest on the Street. The median target is $175.
Nike's shares were trading at $152.10, after hitting an all-time high of $154.18 earlier. The jump also helped push the S&P 500 index to a record high, while lifting shares of German peers Adidas and Puma about 6 per cent and 2 per cent, respectively.
Lectra has signed an agreement to acquire the entire capital and voting rights of Neteven for €12.6 million. The company will acquire the remaining rights in June 2025, for an amount between 0.6 to 0.9 times 2024 recurring revenues.
Founded in 2005, French company Neteven has developed a particularly innovative offer, based on a SaaS platform and associated services, which enables brands to simplify and effectively monitor the distribution of their products on the world’s largest online marketplaces.
With Lectra, the company will be able to cover the entire chain, from production to distribution. It will respond to brands’ direct-to-consumer strategy issues. The collaboration will allow the company to go even further in terms of innovation, value creation, and business as well as international expansion.
A major global player in the fashion, automotive, and furniture markets, Lectra designs and produces industrial intelligence solutions – software, hardware, data and services – for brands, manufacturers and distributors.
According to Lectra, Neteven is the perfect complement to the other solutions recently acquired by the company, Kubix Link (product lifecycle management and product information management – PLM, PIM) and Retviews (competitive intelligence and trend analysis). The combination of the three offers will enable Lectra to provide an even more comprehensive response to its fashion customers’ needs.
H&M has entered into a new partnership with Brock Collection. As per Women’s Wear Daily, the two brands have teamed for a collection infused with Brock Collection’s’s feminine and romantic aesthetic. The collection includes dresses, blouses, jeans and shorts as well as accessories like shoes, jewelry, handbags and sunglasses.
The collaboration includes similar elements to Brock Collection’s spring 2021 collection that which featured black-and-white floral prints, flowing silhouettes and ruffles. The Brock Collection x H&M collection is also created with sustainable materials, such as recycled cotton and recycled polyester.
The Brock Collection x H&M collection is the latest designer partnership to come from the fashion brand. H&M had previously teamed up with designer Simone Rocha on a collection which gained huge popularity in China.
H&M has also previously teamed with designers and brands like Giambattista Valli, Karl Lagerfeld, Moschino, Erdem, Kenzo and many others over the last few years.
The Brock Collection x H&M collaboration ranges in price from $12.99 to $59.99 and is available on H&M’s web site and in select stores.
Omni-channel eyewear retailer Lenskart plans to open more than 300 new stores as state-wide lockdowns are relaxed, taking the total to over 1,000 stores. The company has over 750 stores in total and more than 720 are in India.
Prior to the pandemic, Lenskart would see around 60-65 per cent of sales from online. Due to the nature of the business, consumers end up visiting stores quite often.
The online channel had seen a significant shift due to the second COVID-19 wave and that it had strengthened the Ghaziabad-based startup’s market share in the organized retail space. Most of these stores will be in India while it will also expand into the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Lenskart is on track to record net profits for the first time in the ongoing financial year despite the second wave's impact from March to May. The company recorded revenue of around Rs 1,000 crore in FY20 without turning in a profit The company has also set up a 'Lenskart Vision Fund' with a corpus of around $20 million which will invest in startups in the area of eye testing technologies, omni-channel technology solutions across in-store automation, logistics, supply chain, merchandising, marketing, and deep tech solutions for eyewear, retail and ecommerce.
As per a recent survey by The NPD Group, around 41 per cent consumers discover fashion brands and retailers through Facebook, 35 per cent discover through Instagram and 21 per cent discover through 21 per cent. Around 51 per cent consumers said, they were most inspired by the content on Facebook and Instagram while buying fashion products.
In a recent thought leadership survey done in conjunction with partner CivicScience, when NPD asked consumers if they made any unplanned purchases of clothing, footwear, or accessories while scrolling through social media, younger consumers said they were more inclined to buy on impulse. In fact, one in three consumers between the ages of 13 and 24 had some sort of purchase interaction when it came to fashion and social media. Twelve percent said they made an unplanned purchase, 17 per cent said they were not opposed to it in the future, while only 6 per cent said they would not purchase fashion products via social media sites again.
