Secondhand Japanese clothing has great demand in Southeast Asia and China. Treasure Factory, which has about 180 locations in Japan, has two shops in Thailand, with plans to add eight more by 2021. The shops target customers in their 20s to 40s mainly selling T-shirts and pants from Japan.

Unlike Thai secondhand shops -- typically street stalls with items piled up randomly -- Treasure Factory operates out of buildings and carefully organizes items by type, such as jackets and pants. It also examines articles to detect stolen items and hazardous objects, such as needles. Since the beginning of fiscal 2018, Treasure Factory’s sales in Thailand are up 20 per cent.

Geo Holdings, an used clothing shop in Japan, opened the first of its planned 20 Malaysian stores in June. The stores will mainly sell shirts and jeans from the company’s Japanese stores. The company also hopes to supply local used clothing shops and will use its Malaysian base as a gateway for exports to neighboring southeast Asian countries.

Japan’s used goods market recorded an annual growth of 7.4 per cent in 2016. The aggregate gross profit margin for Japan’s general used merchandise businesses is about 65 per cent, which is higher than that of merchants dealing in new products.

The Bangladesh government has initiated penal measures to curtail non-compliance of RMG factories pertaining to labor norms. The government’s move is being supported by the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Consequent to the government initiative, the Department of Inspection For Factories and Establishments suspended the licences of 219 factories catering to the RMG sector. Further, the government body has also requested the apex bodies in charge of RMG sector, namely the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), and Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA), to stop issuing utilisation declaration to these factories.

Both export bodies have decided to pursue the matter with their 219 non-compliant member factories to decide an appropriate course of action that will help meeting government norms. The complaint given to these export bodies stated the 219 units posed hazardous working conditions and raised serious safety concerns. The factories have failed to make the required progress in ILO’s remediation process that was set in place to upgrade safety standards.

Pakistan sees the trade war between China and US as beneficial. The country is exploring ways to benefit from it. One way is for Pakistan to import Chinese semi-finished goods, and with a little value addition, these goods can be exported to the US and western countries.

Pakistan also wishes to bridge the trade gap with China and negotiations for a FTA are progressing. The FTA covers more than 6,700 tariff lines at eight-digit tariff code under the harmonised system. The two countries have discussed tariff reduction modalities for the second phase besides the electronic data interchange, services and investment, sanitary and phyto-sanitary and technical barriers to trade measures.

Currently Pakistan is imposing zero per cent duty on 35 per cent of the products while China has reciprocated with zero per cent duty on 40 per cent of the products. Pakistan wants China to grant deeper market access for 35 to 40 tariff lines of Pakistan's prime export interest in the first step to make the FTA mutually beneficial and to promote acceptability of the second phase.

Cotton production in Pakistan is on the decline and this is hurting the textile industry. The country’s exports of fashion apparel comprise 36 per cent of its total textile exports.

Project I, an innovative apparel manufacturing group started by fashion executives Jon Lewis and John Elmuccio, collaborated with Germany’s leading flat knitting machine manufacturer Stoll, at the Stoll Symposium in New York City recently. The collaboration will strengthen America’s fashion market, restore apparel production jobs using the latest technology, and revitalise the fully-fashioned knit sector. It will also bring a great output of jobs and help position the US as a key player of the apparel manufacturing and supply chain market.

The collaboration will install 300 high-tech flatbed knitting machines throughout the next three years. Stoll will install the latest generation of ADF machines, which feature yarn carriers that are independent of the carriage and can move horizontally and vertically, and the latest CMS 830 C&S Knit & Wear (seamless knitting) machines. The company will also provide programming, training, manufacturing and on-site production support while guiding new and existing customers alike to Project I.

Project I’s new venture will incorporate an eco-friendly workspace that will provide sustainable manufacturing jobs. Production is anticipated to begin at the end of 2019 at a brand-new US-based facility.

For Pakistan, revival of idle capacity in the textile industry would be top priority. Gas prices would be rationalized for the textile industry throughout the country from October. A level playing field would be provided to the textile industry in order to boost exports. Obstacles to import of raw materials, both cotton and manmade fiber, would be removed. Refunds on account of sales tax and duty drawbacks would be expedited. An enabling environment would be provided for the industry to undertake new investments.

Pakistan’s textile exports fell 0.49 per cent in July 2018 compared to the same month a year before. Exports of cotton cloth decreased 9.94 per cent. Exports of bed wear decreased by 3.56 per cent. Tents, canvas and tarpaulin exports declined 4.73 per cent. Exports of readymade garments decreased 0.46 per cent. Exports of art, silk and synthetic textiles contracted 16.02 per cent. Exports of made-up articles went down 6.91 per cent.

With the largest share, textiles make up around 60 per cent of the country’s total exports. Pakistan’s competitors are upping the ante on textile exports to make inroads into more global markets. While China’s share in global textile exports is 36 per cent, Vietnam contributes 12.4 per cent, and Pakistan seven per cent.

Eight Dutch institutional investors, with combined assets of €725 bn, have launched a platform campaigning for fair wages in the textile sector in the developing world. The Platform Living Wage Financials (PLWF) initiative demanded that textile manufacturers increase the salaries of staff in clothing factories to a ‘living wage’.

The investors – including asset managers MN, Kempen, Achmea IM, NN IP and Robeco – have also targeted banning child labour and excessive overtime. The platform expected manufacturers to provide better wages at suppliers end as well as in their own factories. It engaged 27 textile firms initially, to find out whether they have a policy in place to improve wages in poor countries.

According to Van Lierop, this included H&M, Puma, Adidas and PVH Corp – the parent company of fashion brand Tommy Hilfiger – at the forefront. PLWF’s second step would be to assess whether policies are applied in practice and whether they lead to higher wages.

Swedish scientists have developed a new instrument to analyse fibers. Staple fibers are fibers with the necessary length and properties so that, through a spinning process, a yarn can be formed. The new instrument, Fibrotest, allows better measurement of the length and tensile properties of fibers. Fiber lengths vary a lot and many samples are required to create statistically reliable data. With the new instrument, the data become reliable.

F iber analysis is improved for both research and education. The overall aim of analysing fibers is to spin them into thread, while they can also be reused. At present, fiber measurements are manually done with tweezers, rulers, good eyes and a lot of patience.

Fibrotest can also be used for educational purposes. It is important to assess their quality and the ability to spin with them, especially for cellulose fibers. It is also important to be able to assess the decomposition of fibers during a mechanical recovery process.

Fibrotest combines fiber length measurement and fiber strength test on fiber bundles within one instrument. The two measurements – first fiber length and thereafter fiber strength – are executed in succession on the same sample. After completing these measurements the sample mass is automatically determined which enables the calculation of exact and absolute value of tenacity.

The focus of the global fashion industry is turning to the environment, and the industry’s impact and role. Fashion falls just behind energy production and food as the most polluting industry, with a disturbingly large ecological footprint. It is incredibly wasteful. It takes at least 10,000 liters of water to produce a kg of cotton (enough for a pair of jeans and a shirt) and more than 75 per cent of clothes go to landfill.

Worldwide consumption is increasing sharply with production doubling between 2000 and 2014. Adding to the waste problem is the pollution. The fashion industry has an immensely complex supply chain, which penetrates several other sectors (agriculture, transport, energy consumption). Twenty per cent of industrial water pollution is linked to the fashion sector and 0.5 billion tons of plastic microfibers are released from washed clothing annually.

The average use period for an item of clothing keeps shrinking. Until this changes efforts of producers will merely be offsetting our insatiable hunger to buy more. The only true fix for this, and many broader environmental problems, is for the tide of uber-consumerism to turn. However, responsible the brand, fashion by definition needs people to demand change, freshness, newness, and more. <br/

China, with support from the EU and Japan, is working to bring about changes to the WTO. China wants to curb the rise of unilateralism within the multilateral trading system represented by the WTO. It feels reforms in the organization need to address the concerns of members, especially emerging economies, which have a larger total population than developed countries.

The rapid growth of emerging economies has led to a shift in economic power. Emerging markets surpassed developed countries to account for more than half of world GDP on the basis of purchasing power in 2013. As their domestic markets and imports grow, emerging economies want to have a bigger say in international trade and economic negotiations.

WTO reforms cannot ignore China, which is the world's largest trading country. The majority of WTO members are developing countries, and each has its own ideas on WTO reform. China, like other emerging countries, follows a primary strategy of promoting economic and social development. The growing spending power of consumers in developing countries injects vitality into the global market.
China supports the work of the WTO but it is against the changes proposed by the US, Japan and EU on the notification system for domestic industrial subsidies. These countries and groups feel some WTO members such as China have failed to comply with a notification system.

Alibaba will partner 200 garment factories in China. The tie-up will assist garment factories to monitor their production data through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Cameras will be installed for data collection. A retail management platform belonging to Alibaba will synchronize the production process through computer vision algorithms.

Each implementation takes approximately two days since no personnel training is involved in the installing and commissioning. The process of digital transformation includes the installation and repeated debugging of 20 cameras, hardware, fiber-optic networks and other equipment.

In this technology revamping process, factories’ scheduling performance has increased six per cent and delivery cycles have become ten per cent shorter. The retail management platform has also introduced an instant messaging platform to synchronize real-time information to all the factories involved in the project. The messaging platform will notify the progress of an order to everyone and a robot will text the responsible person if something goes wrong.

Alibaba is looking to help manufacturing companies innovate and upgrade. The current manufacturer-oriented industry will transition to a new era led by customers, where small- and medium-sized enterprises can benefit the most. So far some 20 factories have undergone technology revamping.

metakey: Alibaba