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Garments Manufacturer Welfare Association (GMWA), an organisation of around 750 garments manufacturers in Mumbai proposes to set up a textile and apparel park in Kutch. Anil Gami, President, GMWA, an organization of around 750 garments manufactures in Santacruz area launched an online demand survey for a textile and apparel park in Kutch on April 30.
Around 1,400 businessmen have filled up their forms for the survey. Around 90 per cent of those who have evinced interest in the idea are Kutch businessmen settled in Mumbai while the rest are from other districts of Kutch. One of these manufacturers, Apex Garments Solutions has revealed that the park will include facilities for yarn manufacturing to ready-made garments. It may employ around 250,000 people and seek government aid for its operations.
While sales depots and showrooms can continue to be in Mumbai, manufacturing can shift to Kutch to cut down costs. According to Ashwin Mehta, a native of Kutch and a garment manufacturer in Mumbai, a textile park can make the garments manufacturing industry more organised.
Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) in its budget proposals has demanded 10 per cent cash incentive against using local raw materials and 4.0 per on imported ones for the next two years. Global demand is expected to decline 40 per cent resulting in price fall of products hence, it would be difficult for exporters to sustain. Also, due to the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak, many factories would close down. Hence, BKMEA also recommended the government to provide a guideline for exit in the upcoming budget. The association also demanded continuation of the existing 0.25 per cent source tax for the next year and withdrawal of 5.0 taxes on cash incentive.
Other demands include: duty-free import of the industrial racking system (IRS), industrial thermostat dehumidifier and other safety equipment. Regarding the IRS, the trade body expects to get more work orders from global buyers if they can set up international standard compliant factories and bonded ware house facility. According to it, a modern IRS helps to store huge quantity of products at a short space and to find them out easily in a bonded ware house.
To reinforce a digital culture within the Prada Group and improve its customer relations, the Italian fashion company has sealed a partnership with leading Customer Experience Management platform Sprinkler. This collaboration will help the group to have clearer oversight of its ROI [return on investment] on its digital strategy and ultimately engage with i consumers and social communities online.
The fashion group is addressing challenges that include creating a digital-first culture, which is not a small piece of technology, but involves a change in the mind-set and approach within the company, reviewing the entire working.
Based in New York, Sprinklr uses the modern advertising platform to optimize return on spending, reduce advertising production costs, protect brand reputation and relies on artificial intelligence to analyze all data, which can help tailor the next message.
Sprinklr is a global software service with more than 1,800 employees helping brands in more than 150 countries.
British Fashion Council (BFC) is supporting creative fashion businesses and individuals across the UK. by doling out as much as £50,000 ($60,900) 87extra funding to continue operating during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The grants, awarded from the council’s £1,000,000 ($1.2 million) emergency fund, are allocated to 37 viable businesses depending on their urgency and capability to function and thrive after the crisis.
The emergency fund pools talent support grants that would usually have been awarded for either early-stage showcasing support or business growth and promotion, including the BFC and Vogue Designer Fashion Fund (VDFF). Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, six of these designers—Alighieri, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy, David Koma, Halpern, Metier and Rejina Pyo—were named as finalists for the BFC and VDFF 2020. The winner was set to receive a cash prize of £200,000 ($243,700) and a year’s worth of mentoring, but the BFC and Vogue made the decision to split the prize money among the six designers in early March when COVID-19 upended the U.K. market.
The fund has seen more than 220 applications to date. All applicants who did not receive funding through this round will be informed when new rounds of funding open and will be advised of government support schemes.
Fund recipients will receive a maximum of £50,000 ($60,900) and will also be given access to BFC business support and mentoring from the BFC’s Fashion Business Network including DLA Piper, Eco-Age, Farfetch, FashionEx, Google, HSBC, Instagram, Lewis Silkin, Lloyds, LVMH, Mishcon De Reya, RSM, Sheridans, Taylor Wessing, The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, The Bicester Village Shopping Collection and YouTube, plus individual expert one-to-one mentors from across the business value chain.
As stores closed across Europe and the United States in March and April in response to the new coronavirus, many fashion brands and retailers cancelled orders for clothes, bags, and shoes worth billions of dollars from Asian garment factories, forcing them to close and lay off hundreds of thousands of workers.
After a public outcry, some Western companies agreed to pay for orders that have already been shipped or are in production. Others asked for discounts or have delayed payment, leaving suppliers struggling to stay afloat.
A few retailers are making new orders, but the long-term survival of Asia’s garment factories and the welfare of its laid-off workers are uncertain.
Online luxury retailer Fartech reported a growth of 90.4 per cent rise in its revenue for Q4 2019, jumping from $157.3 million to a staggering l$9 331.4 million.
This rise in revenue is attributed to the 30.6 per cent rise in the digital revenue from their e-commerce website which recorded an active user count of 2.1 million.
Farfetch also has physical stores mainly in metropolitan cities and some shop-in-shop formats that have proved to be successful in their operations.
The luxury retailer has also credited their global presence as well as resilient supply chain that have fared well even during the times of store closures in many countries.
The company also reported a growth of 45.7 per cent in GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) which was capped at US $ 610.9 million from $ 191.6 million of the last quarter.
Asics Corp.’s investment subsidiary, Asics Ventures, has invested in Seevix Material Sciences, which produces patented man-made spider silk.
Dubbed SVX, the material possesses natural spider silk’s superior strength, elasticity and durability, while also being sustainable and biodegradable. Seevix manufactures SVX through biomimicry in a controlled fermenter-based process.
Asics said one of the core strategies in its medium-term management plan is to “create differentiated innovation.” Asics has continued to introduce advanced technologies into its products to improve both sustainability and functionality, and has shifted to sustainable materials, including those deriving from biotechnology, by collaborating with external partners.
By resequencing the spider silk gene and controlling its cellular micro-environment, Seevix is able to induce the fiber’s spontaneous self-assembly on a commercial scale. Seevix said this critical capability endows the fiber with superior natural properties and enables their integration into new composite materials.
Asics aims to contribute to a circular economy while creating innovative products, services and processes that significantly change customers’ lifestyles experiences.
The Nigerian government is targeting N 5.089 billion from the partnership with the private sector to revive the garment and leather industries. Director general of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) Chidi Izuwah recently said the amount would be made up of 80 per cent debt and 20 per cent equity with zero contribution by the government.
Hewas was speaking at an event to present the full business case (FBC) compliance certificate to the Nigeria Correctional Service (NCS) in respect of the proposed NCS shoe and garment factories in Aba in Abia state and the Janguza Tannery Factory in Kano state under the PPP mode.
He said the PPP would lead to the creation of 1,290 direct jobs, several indirect jobs locally and savings on foreign exchange, according to Nigerian media reports.
The arrangement between NCS and local company Erojim Investments and its technical partner, China’s Poly Technologies Inc., is aimed at establishing a world-class factory using the most modern technology and quality inputs to produce high quality shoes, garments and leather products.
JC Penney, which filed for bankruptcy protection on Friday, plans to close 242, or 29 percent, of its 846 stores over the next two years, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchanges Commission.
For the current fiscal year, 192 stores are expected to close and then 50 the following year, the document notes. After the closings, the company will have 604
As SGB reported earlier Monday, Nike was left with an unpaid bill of $32.1 million in the bankruptcy of J.C. Penney, according to court documents. Other firms in the active lifestyle space landing on the list of the top-50 unsecured creditors included Adidas, owed $7.1 million; Supreme International, $5 million; Izod, $4.6 million; and New Balance, $3.2 million.
Nike’s unsecured claim was second only to Wilmington Trust Global Capital Markets, which on a combined basis is owed over $1 billion.
JC Penney filed for bankruptcy in Texas. The company has an agreement with most of its lenders on the turnaround plan that will allow it to stay in business as a more financially healthy company, but will include closing about a quarter of its 846 stores.
Vietnam’s accomplishment in pushing back the pandemic was driven partially by a program of focused testing and the mass, concentrated isolation of a huge number of individuals. Following five years of development, foreign investment in Vietnam fell by 15.5 percent in the initial four months of the year to $12.3 billion, as indicated by information from the General Statistics Office (GSO). Despite this, the country is targeting annual GDP growth of above 5 per cent this year.
For this quick response, the country in on the verge of getting huge foreign investments to pour in after the pandemic. Kizuna Joint Development Corporation, a company that builds read-to-go factories in Vietnam plans to complete a 100,000 square meters factory in southern Vietnam fully expecting an expansion in post-pandemic interest
