As per Moody’s, the apparel industry has witnessed a huge business shock due to the global spread of COVID-19. Businesses, categorized as non-essential, are facing indefinite period of low activity with retailers facing months of store closures and depressed consumer demand.

Reduce planned inventory size

The entire situation has raised questions about the validity of the apparel industry’s current business model and whether it needs to be changed. Experts believe the top most priority for apparel and accessories supply chains is to reduce planned and scheduled incoming inventory — especially for brands with less basic, more seasonal and trend-driven fashion.

For example, Guess came up with the idea of right-sizing its inventory. The brand’s inventory declined 16 per cent year-over-year at the end of the fourth quarter, which Katie Anderson, CFO described as a "clean position" meaning the retailer would not need to heavily discount it or sell inventory into off-price channels.

Brands need to control the size of their inventory and the time of its arrival. They are often surprised when pallets of goods show up at their warehouses. Sometimes, they refuse to receive these shipments which may have dire consequences on future business. However, brands are willing to take this risk rather than hold inventories that they may not be able sell later.

Simplify operations and retail footprint

To deal with such problems, brands need to adopt a simple retail footprint and simpler operations. Retailers and wholesalers need to adjust their forecasts and share these changes with manufacturers at every step, believes Balika Sonthaia, Partnery, Kearney. E-commerce helps brands take varied approaches to inventory control from lowering or eliminating free shipping minimums, to closing e-commerce operations for the health and safety of warehouse employees.

However, e-commerce cannot help brands gain access to trapped store inventory. As a result, pure-play e-commerce revenue declined almost 63 per cent in March as compared to a pre-virus benchmark, revealed digital advertising performance tracking service within.

Directing excess inventory to a good cause

Currently, each company faces different set of challenges based on their existing inventory levels, store and warehouse geography, financial health, existing technological tools, supply chain visibility, etc. One of the few universal recommendations for these companies is to plan inventories with an assumption that stores may see very few footfalls.

Instead of bearing the risk of unsold inventory and incurring all carrying costs, retailers could put that inventory to some good use. The COVID-19 pandemic has created many needs for apparel and fabric, whether in the form of masks for healthcare workers or donations for families with interrupted income. Fashion brands can help these workers and families by donating unsold clothes. This will help them to build their identity and cash in on these measures after the crisis is over.

Turkey’s textile industry recorded more than an 8 per cent increase year-on-year in exports, hitting $1.81 billion in July.

An Anadolu Agency (AA) report published Tuesday, which cited Uludağ Exporters Union (UIB) and Turkish Exporters Assembly (TIM) data, showed that the textile and ready-to-wear industry exported to more than 150 countries in July.

Meanwhile, the total exports reached $8.79 billion in the first half of 2020, posting a 15 per cent decrease compared to the previous year.

Germany ranked first among the recipient countries of Turkish textile exports in July with $349.1 million, a 15 per cent increase year-on-year. Spain and the U.K. followed Germany with $248 million and $183 million, respectively.

Meanwhile, exports to the U.S. increased by a whopping 53 per cent in the same period compared to the previous year and reached $109 million.

Turkey’s overall exports reached the highest level of 2020 as they hit over $15 billion amid a rapid recovery from the pandemic.

TJ Maxx, one of the largest clothing retailers in the US cancelled work orders of 12,000 units of garment items worth $85,950 and held up payment for 17,700 units of garment work orders worth $125,000 with another local supplier.

It has not been paying its Bangladeshi suppliers their dues, although its parent company paid a substantial amount of dividend to its shareholders during the pandemic.

The TJX Companies, the parent company of TJ Maxx and Marshalls that also got US government credit for COVID-19, distributed $480 million to its shareholders recently.

TJ Maxx has been sourcing garment items from few Bangladeshi factories and it has cancelled work orders with them using the proverbial excuse of a drop in sales and closure of stores during the pandemic.

It pushed to reopen stores amidst the pandemic in May, which led to reopening of 85 per cent of its stores by mid-June. It even had more sales in May than last year.

After September 25, Hong Kong exports to the United States will henceforth made labeled as Made in China, said a notice by the US Customs and Border Protection The move follows China's imposition of a national security law on Hong Kong and a US decision to end the former British colony's special status under US law, escalating bilateral tensions that were already rising over trade war tariffs and the handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

The latest step will see Hong Kong companies subject to the same trade war tariffs levied on mainland Chinese exporters, should they make products subject to these duties. After 45 days, the goods will be marked to indicate that their origin is China.

The step was taken after the United States determined that Hong Kong is no longer sufficiently autonomous to justify differential treatment in relation to China.

G-III Apparel Group has renewed its license agreements with Levi Strauss & Co for the Levi’s® and Dockers® brands. These licenses have been renewed through November 30, 2024 and cover men’s and women’s outerwear under the Levi’s® brand and men’s outerwear for the Dockers® brand.

Levi’s® men’s and women’s outerwear collections will continue to be sold in select department stores, specialty stores, and premium outerwear retailers, as well as Levi’s® retail locations. Dockers® men’s outerwear will be available at select department stores nationwide.

G-III designs, sources and markets apparel and accessories under owned, licensed and private label brands. G-III’s owned brands include DKNY, Donna Karan, Vilebrequin, G. H. Bass, Eliza J, Jessica Howard, Andrew Marc and Marc New York. G-III has fashion licenses under the Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Karl Lagerfeld Paris, Kenneth Cole, Cole Haan, Guess, Vince Camuto, Levi’s® and Dockers brands. Through its team sports business, G-III has licenses with the National Football League, National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, National Hockey League and over 150 U.S. colleges and universities.

More than one-quarter of 35,000 suppliers across nine industries and five regions including North America, Latin America and the Caribbean,Europe, Greater China and Asia, the Middle East and Africa have no health crisis measures—across supplier due diligence, employee health and safety and proper working conditions—in place, according to fourth edition of the Business Sustainability Risk and Performance Index by ratings platform EcoVadis, which drew on data from 2015 to 2019 and parsed them into four assessment themes: environment, labor and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement.

While most scores improved by at least 9 per cent since 2015, those for sustainable procurement remain at the lowest end, EcoVadis said. Labor and human rights, which ticked up 11 percent from EcoVadis’s previous analysis, showed the biggest gains.

EcoVadis found that small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) have shown consistent score improvements (a 6 percent increase over five years) while larger companies have presented more fluctuations. SMEs have also consistently outstripped their larger counterparts in the sustainable procurement area since 2015.

Europe remains the undisputed leader in sustainability performance with over a 10-point advantage compared to North America, which came in second, the analysis found. Greater China remains the lowest-scoring region, while performance in the AMEA and Latin America and the Caribbean is mixed.

Le Tien Truong, General Director, Vietnam Textile and Garment Group (Vinatex), advises Vietnam to focus on basic products as the country’s textile and garment exports are expected to decline by 14-18 per cent during the last six months of the year. The total export turnover of the country is expected to decline by 16 per cent to $32.75 billion. Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade says, in the first seven months of this year, textile production in Vietnam increased by 1.8 per cent, while clothing production decreased by 4.6 per cent compared to the same period in 2019.

Export turnover of textiles and apparel in these seven months declined by 12.1 per cent to $16.18 billion, while that of fiber and textile fibers decreased by 20.9 per cent over the same period in 2019.

Although clothes still ranked fourth in the priority list after savings, the budget for garments was very limited. Therefore, Vietnam needs to accept flexible, non-specialized production plans in the short term; continuing to focus on cost savings, improve competitiveness; accept competition and production in difficult conditions to maintain the system, adds Le Tien Truong.

In addition, businesses need to rearrange the production force, identify the key workforce that needs to maintain jobs and income for workers to accompany enterprises through the difficult period when the market is not yet recovered, he says. According to him, the domestic market needs to be considered a solution for employee psychology, encouraging the spirit of using Vietnamese goods.

Bremen Cotton Exchange highlights, cotton can substitute plastic in various important product ranges and help the industry reduce waste. The agency says, cotton can be used to develop technical textiles for lightweight construction purposes, into the automotive and aircraft sector for the production of bio-based material, and for nonwovens in sanitary products.

Retailers like drugstores can offer items made of 100 per cent cotton, for example sanitary napkins or tampons, cotton wool pads, wadding, cleaning wipes and other personal care products as well as cotton buds with paper shaft. Cotton is already been employed for the production of baby diapers. Since cotton is hypo allergic by nature this is beneficial not only for the sensitive baby skin.

These properties along with the special breathability of the fiber make cotton the preferred material for everyday face masks during the current pandemic, too. Cotton fabrics are able to absorb the virus, and dehydrate as well as deactivate.

J Crew, which had been struggling much before the pandemic crisis started and with the deadly onslaught of COVID-19 early this year, finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. A committee of unsecured creditors claimed in the bankruptcy court that J. Crew and its secured lenders grossly undervalued’ the business while overvaluing certain collateral. This led to shifting away of value from general unsecured creditors.

The retailer also reached an agreement with landlords of J Crew and Madewell to secure certain concessions including rent deferrals and one-time waivers that will help the retailer save $70 million this year and another $60 million next year, provided sales complement the projection.

The retailer has reopened 95 per cent of its stores and reinstated most of its workers. The retailer currently operates 178 J. Crew stores, 145 Madewell stores and 170 factory stores, and generated revenue of $2.54 billion in 2019.

Moody''s Investors Service believes that the coronavirus pandemic may create a more fragmented and protectionist global economy with restrictions on trade, investment and technology transfers. This may benefit some Asian markets excluding China as companies will look to diversify their sources of supply. However, localization of production or reshoring that moves productive capacity out of the region to the US or the European Union will have negative effects for Asian producers, notably those in strategic sectors, the analyst noted.

Moody''s said as the global trade system becomes more regionally focused, each major region – Asia, Europe and the US – will likely have its own suppliers for strategically important products. This will lead to localization and reshoring of supply chains to Europe and the US. According to Moody''s, in a post-COVID world, ensuring supply security through enhanced supply chain robustness will become a key focus of governments and companies. The global trade system will become more fragmented, leading to less efficient, less just-in-time supply chains at the global level but an increase in regionally focused production, it said.