Spinnova recently on boarded two niche textile experts to help commercialize its sustainable wood-based fibre. The company appointed Shahriare Mahmood as its new Sustainability Director. Mahmood joined Spinnova from the renown Finnish children’s wear brand Reima. He has both an academic and a technical textile industry background. Graduated as a chemical engineer in Bangladesh and Master of Engineering in Finland, Mahmood has also worked in textile mills in Asia and Europe.

In the course of his extensive career, he has specialized in e.g. circularity, material R&D as well as quality and supply chain management. He has also recently earned a PhD in sustainability management. With Spinnova, Mahmood focuses on supporting sustainability efforts of partnering brands and related pre-commercial and commercial phase supply chains.

Spinnova’s other textile expert appointment is Eun (Enja) Young Kim, who started as Senior Fibre Application Specialist in Spinnova’s R&D team. Engineer by background, Kim previously worked for fibre technology company Lenzing in Austria, where she worked in technical customer service of technical applications. She will be focusing on developing the Spinnova fibre’s quality and finishings.

French sporting goods retail giant Decathlon opened a new store at Select Citywalk, Saket. The store is equipped with all the safety precautions in order to offer a relaxed shopping experience to its customers.

The zero contact check-out called the ‘Scan & Pay’ uses the app feature to eliminate cashier contact while making the shopping experience easy and fast. It also has a zero contact drive-through for the shoppers on-the-go.

The store also offers the option of ‘Reserve & Collect’ where the order placed on the app can be picked up at the store within a 2 hour pick-up window.

Yogeshwar Sharma, Executive Director & CEO, Select Citywalk says, the mall has always brought customers the chance to experience world class brands across various categories. With the growing focus on sports and fitness, Decathlon would bring all its customers together in their passion for sports.

OFashion, a new online DTC marketplace believes these brands offer immense brand value when sold together and is taking on the marketing efforts to give these smaller companies a chance to thrive at DTC.

OFashion will focus on web traffic, user experience, marketing, and the curation of products. It will also centralize shipping and customer service to make it easier for brands and customers alike. This way unlike other multi-brand fashion marketplaces, processing times will be consistent (next day) and customers will receive their shipment in one box. The marketplace will also provide full customer support, saving customers the possible headache of dealing with multiple vendors for an issue. Orders have a 2 to 3-day shipping time with Free Shipping after $75.

The site also offers Free Returns. Looks on the site will focus on trendy contemporary and fast-fashion styles.

Bangladesh recently lost its coveted position of the second-largest garment exporter globally to Vietnam, in face of reversals in the export front, lately. Nevertheless, increased sale of apparel items in the West ahead of Christmas following a hike in demand in run up to the festival season is going to give a fillip to garment exports from Bangladesh, opine garment makers of the country.

They also hope to increase the market share in the USA consequent to the so-called trade war between the USA and the China, which they felt would give a further impetus to apparel exports from the country.

Anwarul Alam Chowdhury, President, BGMEA, said Bangladesh stands a very good chance to gain from the trade war between USA and China, towards increasing its share in the US market.

Meanwhile, as per Mohammed Hatem, Vice-President, BKMEA, temporary factory closure on account of coronavirus breakout in Bangladesh, in April, and reopening to operate only on a limited scale in May and June, are amongst the major reasons why Vietnam had been able to surpass Bangladesh.

Luxury fashion brand Valentino has banned alpaca wool from future fashion collections, after PETA’s undercover investigation of the world's largest privately owned alpaca farm in Peru, Mallkini, at which these animals are roughly shorn and left with deep wounds. PETA’s exposé highlighting gross misconduct at the site of Mallkini, the largest farm of its kind globally is ringing alarm bells for apparel brands that are just now becoming aware of the implications of their animal product sourcing strategies.

At the site in Peru, alpaca were found crying and vomiting as they’re roughly shorn with clippers leaving them in a bloodied state. In some cases, these animals were shown to be slammed onto tables, with their limbs clamped to stretching machines that almost dislocated their legs.

Marks & Spencer was the first to respond to the investigation’s findings as it highlighted concerns around the welfare of animals that are farmed to produce alpaca wool. A week later, Fast Retailing brand Uniqlo similarly pledged to ban the material from its products.

Turkey plans to hold the ITM 2021 Exhibition from June 22-26, 2021. The exhibition will direct the textile machinery sector to the latest technologies, new investment decisions, and strong collaborations. The exhibition will be attended by domestic and international textile machinery manufacturers. It will enable these company officials to integrate the latest developments in textile machinery into their production and direct their investments.

ITM 2021 will also enable these manufacturers to prove themselves in the domestic and international markets. The Turkish textile industry has made a righteous name for itself all over the world by coming to the fore in the field of production of masks and protective textiles during the COVID-19 crisis. These companies revitalized Turkey’s economy by providing confidence to the supply chain, taking rapid actions in changing conditions, strong infrastructure, and dynamic and skilled labor force.

These companies engaged in the production of high-quality masks and protective textiles in hygienic conditions, by using the advantages of early delivery due to Turkey’s geographical position. They also become the first choice of the European countries, which turned their route to nearby producers for supply.

UK’s Textiles Recycling Association (TRA), the Bureau of International Recycling and other organizations have welcomed a new protocol that provides information on what Kenya considers to be best practice on the importation and sale of used textiles and shoes and how supply chain operators should conduct their operations whilst ensuring the health and safety of the sellers, importers, wholesalers and buyers.

In its July/August issue of the Recycing International, Alan Wheeler, Director, TRA, appreciated Mitumba Association of Kenya for making excellent representations to their Government to help develop their industry and give it the recognition and credibility it deserves. He believes the formation of the new association in the country demonstrates how the voice of traders can be made stronger and more persuasive through the formation of recognized trade associations. Wheeler also advised Kenya to open its markets again.

The two leading tradeshow organizers Messe Frankfurt and Premium Group are joining forces to launch Frankfurt Fashion Week in summer 2021. The event will increase Frankfurt’s appeal as an international fashion hotspot. It has been purposely aimed at a forward-looking, digital-savvy fashion and lifestyle community. It will make innovative and sustainable products, collections and business models accessible to the wider market. It will also promote the future-oriented interconnection of fashion and technology as part of the real-digital reality. With leading international fairs like Techtextil, Texprocess and Texworld – and over 50 textile fairs worldwide – the Texpertise Network of Messe Frankfurt will open up further synergies.

The core components of Frankfurt Fashion Week will be Premium, Europe’s most relevant business platform for advanced women’s and menswear; Seek, one of the most progressive tradeshows for contemporary fashion, and Neonyt, the leading hub for sustainable fashion.

A new report published by the Better Buying Institute (BBI) has concluded that fashion brands and retailers are offloading their financial hardships onto suppliers. The survey of 147 factories across 30 countries highlighted that since demand picked back up, brands have attempted to undercut the prices they would typically pay to cut costs.

The report, titled ‘Cost and Cost Negotiation and the Need for New Practices,’ assesses the state of relationships between fashion brands and their garment suppliers since business resumed. The report claims the two most reported pricing and ordering strategies: smaller volumes at the same price and lower target prices from previous orders highlights the financial hardship the industry continues to face – as well as the prevailing strategy of offloading financial pressures onto suppliers.

Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA), which is cited in the report says, suppliers are facing upto 15 per cent decline in price points than previous years. The report says that if customer brands to continue to undercut suppliers –then it could signal the demise of decent working conditions in factories. Over half of the surveyed brands indicated that remaining profitable is integral to retaining good working conditions for factory staff.

Home Textile Exporters' Welfare Association (HEWA) has informed that acceding to its request, the government will introduce Faceless Assessments and Faceless Appeals scheme in the indirect tax regime and the same would come in force from September 25 onward. Amending thee-assessment scheme launched last year, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) recently notified changes to include change in nomenclature of scheme from ‘E-assessment scheme’ to ‘Faceless Assessment Scheme.’

HEWA had sought help for small and medium textiles exporters impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic by requesting the government to relax the GST tax regime. As per the association exporters are facing liquidity crunch due to delayed overseas payments and large scale migration of laborers and reduction of working hours, shortage of working space due to adherence of social distancing norms. These exporters are also not well versed with the GST tax regime and depend on tax consultants who charge hefty amount as professional fee.

The association has demanded in case of an exporter being red flagged or declared as 'risky', he must be informed by field formation the exact cause or the reason for his being red flagged.