Cambodia’s apparel exports to Canada increased 20 per cent in the first eight months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021. Canada is the third largest market of Cambodia for apparel exports and has a share of nine per cent in Cambodia’s apparel exports. Cambodia is in fourth position in Canada’s apparel imports. Bangladesh and Vietnam are in the second and third positions. China is in the top position.

Cambodia’s free trade agreement with South Korea has come into effect. The free trade agreement may help boost Cambodia’s apparel exports to South Korea. The agreement also presents opportunities for value-added investments in Cambodia’s downstream processing industries through a plus one business model, in which South Korean companies could expand their supply chain network developed in not only China but also Vietnam or Thailand. South Korea has a great demand for high-value winter clothing and denim. Other potential products that have good demand in the country include non-leather footwear, home textiles, jute and jute products etc.This year, Cambodia’s apparel exports to South Korea may touch pre-Covid levels despite the volatility in monthly shipments.The FTA will remove tariffs on 95 per cent of products imported from Cambodia, while Cambodia will eliminate duties on 93 per cent of imported goods.

Menswear is a booming business. In some cases it’s growing faster than women’s. Expanding into menswear simply allows brands to reap the benefits of both phenomena. There has been exponential growth in the men’s designer ready-to-wear market that presents an opportunity for womenswear brands to move into the category and create organic brand expansion.

There has been more permissiveness in fashion, more fluidity to shopping contributing to this crossover, but the market opportunity seems to be the overwhelming driving factor. Most brands have expanded with a focus on individual offerings for men’s and women’s rather than with unisex assortments. Category expansions also allow labels to position themselves as lifestyle brands and boost business growth even when wholesale is stagnant.

Blurred lines

Menswear has ventured into a space that is less constrained by traditional masculinity and its sartorial prescriptions. The line between menswear and womenswear is fading. Customers are increasingly shopping cross-categories and there’s been a rise in genderless fashion. As shopping habits continue to evolve to reflect customer preferences and expanding identities, the industry will respond in kind.There are specific nuances in pattern grading and cutting in categories like tailoring that are in place to properly fit the traditional female and male forms, and splitting product into men’s and womenswear allows brands to overcome this hurdle without having to revert to oversized everything or see their customers settle with a standardized fit. The same pair of jeans can be offered as both menswear and womenswear with different fits accommodating varying frames, then the customer can decide which fits them the best.At some retail stores, products are merchandized based on the overall aesthetic—there are no women’s or men’s departments, or gendered changing rooms.

Fluid situation

However, the average consumer, at this moment, still has a mental model that they use when buying clothing.When browsing through an expansive assortment of over 1,000 brands, there’s a simplicity and ease in organizing clothing by men’s and womenswear departments because it aligns with how people typically think of clothes and navigate online and brick and mortar stores. Retailers have their own logistical barriers to overcome too. Most are split into men’s and women’s buying teams, each with a budget and responsible for sales in their own areas. At the same time there’s an increasing collective growing consciousness about gender identity that will continue to evolve this thinking as well. As oxymoronic as menswear and womenswear labels may feel at the moment, they also seem like the most inclusive answer.

Consumers, regardless of gender identity, deserve to find a product that fits them and is made for their bodies, and even though sometimes labels can be triggering in terms of gender dysphoria, part of progress is adopting the system to then be able to challenge it. Maybe at the moment what progress looks like is category expansions and men’s and women’s sizing, but the next frontier is coming soon, one, hopefully, that is less reliant on labels—as much as these labels reaffirm the binary, the products that come with them (men’sdresses and skirts and platform shoes) often help challenge it.

Indian Textile Trade fair will be held in Bangladesh, January 11 to 14, 2023. The fair is being organized by the Southern Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SGCCI), which is expecting a footfall of 20,000 including garment exporters, manufacturers, importers, distributors, wholesalers, fashion designers and textile businessmen.

SGCCI is the oldest apex body of Gujarat, with a total focus on growth and development of trade and industry of the southern Gujarat region. Bangladesh imports textile fabrics from different countries and Surat hopes to be a part this textile fabric supply. India can double its merchandise exports to Bangladesh if the latter reduces its peak tariff of 25 per cent on 415 goods under the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA).

India has export competitiveness in these 415 goods. However, India meets hardly 22 per cent of the total import demand of Bangladesh in these 415 goods as the 25 per cent peak import tariff levied by Bangladesh acts as an impediment for Indian exports.These 415 products include denim, woven fabrics, iron and steel articles, paper and paperboard, fresh grapes, electric conductors, gems and jewelry, plastic products, cardamom, footwear, tricycles, washing and cleaning chemicals, ceramic sinks, stranded wires and cables etc.

The Wool & Woollens Export Promotion Council of India has completed 58 years.

WWEPC has rendered valuable services to the Indian woollen industry for enhancing exports and strengthening the production base through qualitative interventions, initiatives on export promotion and other activities.When world export of textile and apparel was governed by the multi-fiber agreement (quota period), WWEPC was assigned work of quota allocation for acrylic knitwear and woollen fabrics. WWEPC successfully transformed itself as a facilitator for export growth.

The council is regularly taking up issues being faced by the woollen industry with the government for effectively accommodating them into the policy framework. The council also provides a unique opportunity and platform for exporters of woollen products to build business contacts with overseas importers and buyers by organising participation in international trade fairs/exhibitions/buyer-seller meets in India and abroad.

The woollen textile and clothing industry is relatively small compared to the cotton and manmade fiber-based textile and clothing industry yet the woollen sector plays an important role by linking the rural economy with the manufacturing industry, represented by small, medium and large-scale units. The product portfolio is equally divergent from textile intermediaries to finished textiles, garments, knitwear, blankets, carpets, etc. with a presence in technical textiles.

Athleisure brands in the US are having a more sustainable approach to fashion.

TMRW Project which offers both men’s and women’s apparel, from T-shirts and tanks, to sweats and accessories, donates a portion of every order toward mental health research and suicide prevention. Beyond Yoga is a company run by women and utilizes local manufacturers, responsible sourcing and the use of recycled materials. The brand donates to non-profits. Headbands of Hope as the name denotes makes headbands for young children suffering from hair loss due to cancer. One headband is donated to a child with an illness for every item sold.The brand’s products are carried in many stores worldwide, and it has given over a million headbands away. It offers many hair accessories including different styles and collections of headbands, scrunchies, turbans, clips, hats, head scarves and more.Sparks Active donates a portion of its proceeds to environment, education or support for refugees and asylum seekers.

They prove activewear isn't only for fitness. Many fitness brands offer great quality at reasonable prices yet some are not ethically responsible in their production methods. Many brands today take part in fast fashion, a business model in the clothing industry that focuses on mass-producing designs at a low cost, often contributing to problems such as pollution, unethical sourcing and unfair labor practices.

The Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF) has suggested changes to the proposed Production Linked Incentive (PLI) 2.0 scheme for the textile sector.

At least 25 companies that manufacture garments or home textiles in the western districts of Tamil Nadu are expected to invest under the scheme when it is implemented. These have to make investments in the Rs 15 crores or Rs 30 crores brackets. Since there are conditions such as the minimum number of machines to be installed, ITF says this cannot be common for the home textiles and garment sectors and that the entrepreneurs should be allowed to choose the machinery.

The average size of apparel units in Tirupur and home textile units in Karur is a Rs 20 crore to Rs 30 crore annual turnover. With several buyers looking at China plus one approach for sourcing, there are huge opportunities for Indian exporters. The units need scale, competitiveness, and specialisation to tap the opportunities.The proposed scheme will benefit small and medium-scale industries that want to scale up and invest in modern machinery.The PLI scheme for the textile sector was announced in September last year and approved 64 applications for production of manmade fiber, apparel, fabrics, and ten product lines in technical textiles.

Scotch & Sodahas opened two new stores in London and one in Copenhagen. While the two stores take the UK portfolio to four, globally these are further addition to 31 stores that have opened since the start of the year.

Scotch & Soda is a fashion retailer from the Netherlands and is continuing with its plans to expand in Europe.Founded in 1985, Scotch & Soda is known for its apparels for men and women and accessories like footwear and bodywear.

Scotch & Soda has been around since the ’80s but was relaunched in 2001. Scotch & Soda currently boasts over 100 stores worldwide, more than 7000 other sales points and a fully up to date online presence with and integrated webstore, blog and social media. The brand is classic in many ways, but young and progressive when it comes to bringing great clothes to the market place. The products are rich in detail, high quality and affordable. The designers at Scotch & Soda spare no expense in ensuring the high quality detailing and finishing of each and every garment produced. The product is typically inspired by the best tried and tested classic and vintage styles, enriched with a wealth of inspiration from around the world.

In the first eight months of 2022 Bangladesh’s apparel exports to the US were up 53 per cent compared to the same period of 2021.

However purchase orders have declined significantly by nearly 30 per cent in the last few months due to the ongoing geopolitical crisis, energy crisis, and global inflation.

Top brands like Walmart and Gap have postponed their global orders due to overstocking their products. Bangladesh is veering away from dependency on the European or North American markets and is finding new markets like east Asia and the Middle East.

China and Vietnam occupy the first and the second highest positions respectively in the US market. US apparel imports from China in the January 2022 to August 2022 period experienced a growth of 37 per cent compared to the same period of 2021. Vietnam’s exports of apparel items to the US in January 2022 to August 2022 fetched a growth of 33 per cent. Bangladesh occupies the third position. India secured the fourth position by exporting apparel items and registering a growth of 56 per cent in the first eight months of 2022. Readymade garment imports of the US from Indonesia in the January to August 2022 increased by 56 per cent while imports from Cambodia grew by 51 per cent.

The free trade agreement may help boost Cambodia’s apparel exports to South Korea.

The agreement also presents opportunities for value-added investments in Cambodia’s downstream processing industries through a plus one business model, in which South Korean companies could expand their supply chain network developed in not only China but also Vietnam or Thailand. South Korea has a great demand for high-value winter clothing and denim. Other potential products that have good demand in the country include non-leather footwear, home textiles, jute and jute products etc.

This year, Cambodia’s apparel exports to South Korea may touch pre-Covid levels despite the volatility in monthly shipments.The FTA will remove tariffs on 95 per cent of products imported from Cambodia, while Cambodia will eliminate duties on 93 per cent of imported goods.On a monthly basis, Cambodia’s outbound shipment of apparel to South Korea gained in July 2022 and further improved in August 2022. South Korea is a very minor market for Cambodia’s apparel exports and is currently positioned at 13th place in terms of apparel exports from Cambodia. South Korea accounted for a mere 1.51 per cent out of Cambodia’s total apparel exports in 2021. The biggest markets for Cambodian garments are, in order, the US, EU, Japan, Canada and the UK.

India is working toward getting zero duty access through free trade agreements in leather goods, sportswear and footwear.

About 7,000 small industries units are connected with the footwear sector which holds great significance to the economy and foreign exchange earnings of the country.Nearly 40 per cent employed in the sector are women and for every 1000 pairs that are produced or sold, 425 jobs are secured. India is the second largest producer of footwear and leather garments. The center has notified the Indian Footwear and Leather Development Program with an outlay of Rs1700 crores for implementation during 2021-26.

India has immense potential in the footwear sector and ethical and responsible practices like zero-waste discharge, salt-free tanning, and occupational health and safety interventionscan increase production and export ten times in the near future. Through a quality control order imports can be limited and good-quality exports can be achieved. Strong global branding through road shows, e-platforms and global joint ventures can help the sector make a mark globally.

Attention can be given to the non-leather footwear sector as well. A lot of emphasis is now being given to the production of manmade fiber. Since brands are dependent on India for raw materials, Indian brands with high-value projects can find their way into the global market.