Burberry, which is reorganising its creative team, has reappointed Adrian Ward-Rees to lead its ready-to-wear business.

Ward-Rees held the role of senior VP and MD of Dior Homme with Christian Dior for the last four years and previously worked at Hong Kong-headquartered Lane Crawford, along with a merchandising role with Burberry. He takes up the new role as senior VP ready-to-wear on July 20, based in London and reporting to Gobbetti.

Burberry will also set up three new business units – ready-to-wear, accessories and shoes and says it plans to pool expertise within them” to improve its focus on products and improve quality.

The local nylon spinning industry is facing a severe threat from China. Along with the sharp fall in demand and with powerloom units still to restart, the existence of Surat’s nylon yarn spinning industry is being threatened by yarn imported from China.

The annual imports of nylon yarn in India stand at 25,000 metric tonne, of which 60 per cent of that comes from China alone. If this year too, Chinese nylon yarn of the same quantity comes to India, then the local industry will be severely affected. These imports are severely damaging the existence of nylon yarn spinners in India, said senior vice-president of Century Enka, Sanjay Mehrotra, who is also the secretary of Surat Nylon Yarn Spinners Association (SNYSA).

In the domestic man-made fibre (MMF) basket, nylon yarn has less than 4 per cent manufacturing share, with 90 per cent consisting of the polyester consumed by domestic powerloom weavers. Around 10 per cent of the powerloom weaving units use nylon yarn for manufacturing dupatta, high-value jacquard saris and square net fabric.

According to the industry payers, Chinese exporters are dumping nylon yarn with heavy under-invoicing. The imported nylon yarn is about 10 per cent cheaper compared to the yarn from Surat.

Yarn Expo Autumn, to be held from September 23-25 at National Exhibition and Convention Centre (Shanghai), will offer visitors a chance to view diverse range of raw and recycled products to satisfy consumer demand for a more sustainable industry. International exhibitors to the event will showcase a wide variety of yarns and fibers made from raw, sustainable materials along with recycled and regenerated products.

Cotton Council International (CCI) will offer buyers quality and traceable fibers from the very beginning of the supply chain. The council has just established the US Cotton Trust Protocol, which will be its signature sustainability program from now on. In terms of environmental impact, this system makes sure that every bale of US cotton is traceable, transparent and measurable

International suppliers such as Hengbang Textile (Vietnam) will showcase their regenerated yarn and cotton yarn; Everest Textile (Taiwan), which - specializes in yarn spinning, twisting, weaving, dyeing, finishing, printing, and coating / laminating processes, will display its recycled polyester, bamboo carbon and cooling yarns, among others.

According to EU data, retail compound growth rate of China's women's underwear market is expected to be worth 197 billion 300 million yuan by 2022. Meanwhile, data by China Apparel Association estimates the size of China's men's underwear market in 2019 to be around 171 billion 300 million yuan, thanks to the steady growth of downstream consumer demand. The main categories of men's underwear include men's underwear, thermal clothing and household clothing.

There are many participants in China’s apparel industry, whose modes are mainly divided into brand enterprise competition and non brand enterprise competition. Women's underwear market, men's underwear market and children's underwear market, the concentration of brand enterprises is low, and market competition pattern is dispersed. For sports bra market, as the market share of Chinese sportswear brand is highly concentrated, market position of the top five sports brands are relatively stable, which poses a great challenge to the expansion of personal clothing brand to sports bra.

According to EU data, in 2018, concentration of top five brands in China's underwear market was only 6.6 per cent, while market concentration of top five markets in Japan, the US and the UK was 56 per cent, 47 per cent and 22 per cent respectively. By contrast, the market concentration of the top five brands in China's underwear market is much lower than that in Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom, so the Chinese underwear market still has the potential to concentrate its market share on leading brands.

Giving in to mounting pressure by nonprofit Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), denim brand Levi Strauss & Co has agreed to pay in full for all finished, ready-to-ship orders and in-progress garment production.  The company has also agreed to use raw materials already received by suppliers for product orders in later seasons.

Levi’s was previously named by WRC in a list of brands that have not made sufficient commitment to pay for orders, on time and in full. The consortium said that the brand’s decision to delay payments relative to agreed terms placed suppliers’ cash flow and their ability to pay garment worker wages at risk.

Levi’s has also launched a new program in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) that allows its suppliers to get early payments at favorable market rates. The brand also supports suppliers in locations not served by the IFC program. In April, the Levi Strauss Foundation granted $1 million funds to address health, food and safety-net needs facing apparel workers in sourcing communities.

Leather goods and footwear exporters in Bangladesh are depressed with a 22 per cent decline in shipments in the just-concluded fiscal year due to the ongoing pandemic. As per Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) stats, leather exporters exported products worth $998 million in fiscal 2019-20, Of the country's total exports, leather footwear earned $779 million while other leather goods accounted for $221 million and rawhide sales $98.31 million. This is owing to the fact that many of the country’s export destinations like US, Italy, Spain, UK and Germany are currently under lockdown.

As the Bangladeshi government has set a revenue target of $5 billion in 2021 through the export of leather goods, the Leather Goods and Footwear Manufacturer & Exporter's Association of Bangladesh (LFMEAB) has urged the EPB to withdraw source tax on export subsidy to help the industry recover amid the coronavirus fallout.

On October 30, 2019, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina assured that financial incentives for the leather goods industry would continue for at least the next five years to enable the country to achieve its export targets from the sector. However, the sector only enjoys a 15 per cent cash incentive on shipments. Hence, it fails to make it big internationally even though the country has an abundance of rawhide and a skilled workforce.

According to a survey from Nationwide YouGov and SafetyCulture, around 71 per cent of American consumers would not feel comfortable shopping in a physical retail store over the next three months. Around 57 per cent of the nearly 1,200 shoppers surveyed in the US said businesses making a real-time list of cleaning and disinfecting activities completed hourly throughout the day public would increase their trust and confidence in that business.

Additionally, 53 per cent said businesses that publicly display a list of daily safety procedures being undertaken in its public areas, with the completion status publicly shown, would also increase trust and confidence. The US-based research was released as part of the SafetyCulture Safely Back to Business initiative, a program designed to support companies globally at a time when safety has become the world’s top business priority. The company has digitized guidance from governments and other industries into fully customizable checklists. The more than 100,000 checklist templates are currently available online to support businesses in their efforts to protect customers and staff from exposure to COVID-19.

An ongoing report by Transparency Market Research says, the global polyester staple fiber market is expected to reach $34.546 billion by 2025. The market is flooded with new entrants who are embracing procedures, for example, mergers, coordinated efforts, and organizations. So as to keep up their strength in the market the set up players are getting different little and medium scale organizations. This enables the players to grow their asset banks and generation limit with further outcomes in better future in global polyester staple fiber market.

The global market has been arranged based on end use into home outfitting, individual consideration and cleanliness, clothing, car, filtration, individual consideration and cleanliness, and development. Among these, the clothing fragment is evaluated to represent a significant portion of the worldwide market in the coming years. The appeal for polyester staple fiber for the assembling of various kind of attire is one of the key components evaluated to support the development of this fragment. Moreover, the home outfitting and car portions are relied upon to observe significant development over the figure time frame.

Global polyester staple fiber market is focused in nature and is anticipated to observe noteworthy ascent in the degree of rivalry in the following barely any years, expresses another statistical surveying study by Transparency Market Research. Key market players are concentrating on improvement of new techniques to hold their driving situation in the polyester staple fiber showcase over the globe. What's more, advancements and improvements in the market are evaluated to support the general development of the market in the coming barely any years.

A group of workers’ rights organizations has accused fashion titan C&A of violating workers rights at one its supplier factories in Myanmar. Workers at the retailer’s Taiwanese Roo Hsing factory have been at loggerheads with their bosses since 2018 after an underhand attempt to implement a bonus system was caught out as a ruse to keep wages low.

C&A is a major buyer from the Taiwanese-owned Roo Hsing factory. The site’s bosses have seemingly looked to quash workers’ attempts to earn even just the country’s minimum wage, which was set at $3.30 in 2018, and will be the subject of new negotiations post COVID-19 as the wage is updated every two years. After years of grappling between the two parties, Clean Clothes Campaign Netherlands (SKC), Action Labor Rights (ALR) and SOMO are now urging C&A to address the supply chain violations.

Export of raw cotton by Pakistan during the first 11 months of FY20 declined by 9.93 per cent compared to raw cotton exports of the corresponding period of last year. Feom July 2019 to May 2020, the country exported around 12,776 metric tons of raw cotton worth $17.005 million, compared to its export of 11,790 metric tons of raw cotton worth $18.879 million in the same period of last year.

During the period under review, the export of cotton yarn declined by 13.12 per cent to 376,286 metric tons compared to the exports of 403,580 metric tons of cotton yarn in the same period of last year. Overall textile exports by the country during the eleven months of FY20 declined by 6.06 per cent and were recorded at $11.567 billion compared to $12.313 billion during the same period of last year.

The negative growth in textile sector exports was mainly due to the global spread of COVID-19 pandemic which has negatively affected foreign economies as well as the local economy.