Shipments of apparel and clothing accessories from the Philippines in June 2019 declined 8.7 per cent as compared the same period last year.Last year, exports of apparel and clothing fell 11.33 per cent.

Exporters, especially those operating in economic zones, want provisions securing tax breaks and exemptions for investors in the garments industry. Garment manufacturers want tax perks, such as reducing the 12 per cent value-added tax, granting a special concession power rate and providing incentives to compensate labor rate differential. They also want the duty-free importation of textile machinery and equipment to be extended and technical importation regulated to assist industry players. A tax reform package seeks to reduce the corporate income tax to 20 per cent by 2029, from 30 per cent at present, and overhaul the menu of incentives.

The trade conflict between the United States and China has not really resulted in increased orders for the Philippines. The country has benefitted only in a very small way, the reason being that the Philippines lacks competent manufacturers and locally milled textile plus the required accessories. So, the Philippines got just ten per cent of the relocated garment orders from China. Most of the orders went to manufacturing powerhouse Vietnam.

Nike has acquired Celect a cloud-based analytics platform that provides proprietary insights that allow retailers to optimise inventory across an omni-channel environment through hyper-local demand predictions. Celect’s team will immediately be integrated into Nike’s global operations team.

Celect is a retail predictive analytics and demand sensing firm based in the US. Celect, founded in 2013, holds an intellectual property portfolio across data science and software engineering. By joining Nike, Celect will add its unique and innovative capabilities to the data and analytics foundation Nike has been building over the years. With the acquisition of Celect, Nike will greatly accelerate its digital advantage by adding a platform developed by world-class data scientists. As demand for its product grows, Nike expects to be insight-driven, data optimised and hyper-focused on consumer behavior and serve consumers more personally at scale.

Nike’s women's category grew double digits in fiscal ’19 accelerating in the back half of the year. The Air Max Dia, a women's sneaker, helped drive double-digit growth in the women's category last quarter. As of now the category makes up less than a quarter of total revenue. The Nike app provides the complete shopping experience on mobile for the brand, and growth has been strong here, too.

Mango closed fiscal 2018 with a rise of 17 per cent in its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (ebitda).At the same time, gross margin rose 2.5 points, up to 58.7 per cent. Sales of the company on the other hand rose 1.8 per cent. The tendency towards rise in sales continued in first half of 2019. It’s the first green year for the group after two fiscals with decreasingresults.Mango’sinternational income represents 77 per cent of its total revenue while sales in Spain, its local market, represent 23 per cent. In 2018, the Spanish retail giant reduced by half its financial two-year debt. The company signed last December a refinancing agreement up until 2023.

Mango opened in 1984. They are two stages in the history of the company. In the first, from 1984 to 1995, Mango gradually gained a greater knowledge of the business and consolidated the product and store concept, and implemented the Just in Time philosophy in the distribution area, obtaining a certain critical mass on the Spanish market. In the second stage, from 1996 to the present, it has reinforced the values of the team and increased investment in a new concept of complete logistics based on speed, information, and technology.

Garment Machinery Manufacturers and Suppliers Association (GMMSA) expo will be held in Ludhiana, January 3 to 6, 2019. The expo will showcase boilers, tumble dryers, air compressors and machinery for knitting, dyeing, finishing, washing, raising, brushing, sueding, polishing and dry cleaning. This is a show dedicated to knitting and sewing technology. It has a good number of players displaying value addition machinery, be it embroidery, printing or laser cutting. Chinese companies exhibit circular and flat knitting machines. There are some players offering chemicals, inks and trims. The expo provides a world class infrastructure and facilities to support exhibitors in showcasing their products and attract industry leaders to enhance their productivity, quality and cost cutting.

Visitors include big as well as emerging garment firms of Ludhiana. Some players in Ludhiana are continuously focusing on new offerings and product developments. As survival is all about offering newness in products, they are going in for advanced infrastructure with a bigger focus on product development and a changed mindset. Ludhiana and its surrounding area is the headquarters for several renowned Indian and global apparel brands and also home to thousands of knitting, spinning and weaving units as well as garment manufacturing units. North India is one of the biggest Indian hubs for manufacturing textiles and apparel.

Lectra will participate in the China International Sewing Machinery &Accessories (CISMA) Exhibition to be held at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre from September 25 – 28, 2019. The company will launch its new Industry 4.0 solutions for fashion, automotive and furniture industries, providing visitors with a unique customer experience.

Developed on Industry 4.0 principles, the solutions will support companies in their digital transformation by using data, artificial intelligence, the industrial Internet of things and cloud technology, said Lectra in a press release.

As an Industry 4.0 pioneer, Lectra’s mission is to help brands, manufacturers and retailers meet industry challenges by crafting the premium technology solutions that facilitate the digital transformation of their industry. Lectra provides companies with expertise and advanced integrated technology to help them achieve operational excellence produce superior-quality products and successfully reach their goals.

Lectra will make history with Fashion on Demand by Lectra, fashion’s first end-to-end personalisation offer. Fashion on Demand by Lectra will automate the entire personalisation process, from order reception and product development, to the final cutting stages. Resulting from a four-year research-and-development process, the revolutionary digital solution for on-demand production comes in three packages for a modular and scalable offer: made to order for sampling, small series and quick assortment; made to customise for customisation orders; and made to measure for made-to-measure clothing.

Furniture on Demand by Lectra is the industry’s first end-to-end solution, from order processing to cutting for customised furniture manufacturing. This breakthrough solution gives furniture companies the ability to make customisation and small series production processes more agile, productive and profitable. It is composed of two packages: Made to Customise and Made to Order.

The Made to Order process starts with automatic creation of the cutting order. Made to Customise begins further upstream, automating creation of furniture components directly from the customer order.

CISMA visitors will have the opportunity to discover how these revolutionary solutions can help companies produce highly customised products, enhance competitive advantages, gain customer loyalty and increase revenues. During the event, Lectra will also showcase other innovative solutions for the fashion, automotive and furniture industries.

Emergency Room, based in Lebanon, aims at providing a sustainable and ethical alternative to fast fashion. The name of the brand derives from its belief that fashion is sick and needs help. Using unexpected materials – from old bed sheets, curtains and fabric designed to upholster sofas, to a roll of waterproof tablecloth printed with a misaligned advert for a German beer – it designs statement pieces. The brand is based on two axis: ethical treatment of garment workers; and the sustainable side of fashion, which is the promise to use only dead stock fabric and secondhand clothes.

The brand redesigns and embellishes garments to give them a new lease of life. Other pieces are made from scratch using high-quality fabrics from rolls that are partially damaged or almost finished, known as dead stock. Saving money on materials allows the brand to pay the dozen or so tailors it works with more per piece as well as ensuring that unwanted fabric doesn’t end up in landfill. Each piece is unique because it comes from limited quantities of a fabric, and that has shaped the eclectic DNA of the brand. Emergency Room’s Instagram page not only showcases the clothes, but also ¬features photographs of the tailors who work on them.

Hennes & Mauritz, the Swedish company behind H&M, Monki and Weekday, and Spain-based Inditex (owner of Zara and Massimo Dutti) are both trimming their network of physical stores and adding more resources into online sales.

After closing about 140 stores last year, H&M has revised down its plans for store openings this year from a net 175 worldwide to 130. The brand is cutting its capacity in Europe, with a net reduction in H&M brand stores across the continent this year.

Zara parent Inditex, meanwhile, closed 355 stores last year. It plans to close another 250, while opening 300 this year.The two companies’ plans for online sales this year are striking. Inditex has already opened online stores this year in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Egypt, Morocco, Israel, Serbia, and Indonesia (serving a combined population of nearly 500 million), and it plans to have stores up and running for its fall/winter collections in South Africa, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrein, Oman, Jordan, Colombia, Philippines and Ukraine.

H&M, meanwhile, is promising big upgrades to its online store, including H&M’s improved navigation and product presentation and shorter delivery times (the latter in particular being an area where it has compared unfavorably to online-only rivals such as Zalando, Boohoo, and, of course, Amazon.com). It also promises more flexibility in payment, building on its investment in fintech unicorn Klarna last year.

"Not immune to the challenges of recession, unemployment and sustainability in consumption and production, India’s RMG exports has been hovering around $17 billion for the last few years. Increasing competition is making buyers more stringent about brand’s compliance to environment standards. They are also seeking faster deliveries. To make the Indian apparel industry more competitive, ILO in partnership with AEPC has developed a compendium of good management practices to help the industry improve quality, efficiency and sustainability."

Not immune to the challenges of recession, unemployment and sustainability in consumption and production, India’s RMG exports has been hovering around $17 billion for the last few years. Increasing competition is making buyers more stringent about brand’s compliance to environment standards. They are also seeking faster deliveries. To make the Indian apparel industry more competitive, ILO in partnership with AEPC has developed a compendium of good management practices to help the industry improve quality, efficiency and sustainability. This compendium will be launched on August 30, 2019.

Setting benchmarks for production and management practices

The project aims to set benchmarks for production, management practices and profitability at par with global standards. Based on the practices adopted, the participating units would benefit by saving both time and costs.

AEPC under the Ministry of Textiles will facilitate a policy dialogue/consultation to deliberate on pressing challenges being faced by stakeholders in the sector. The key objectives of consultation will include:

• Highlight policy concerns that need priority attention to continue RMG sector growth

• Discuss facilitative policy framework and schemes that the sector requires to meet the dual goal of employment generation and skill building

• Launch the compendium of good management practices that RMG sector can adopt for market alignment and competitiveness.

The European Union is contemplating withdraw Cambodia’s Everything But Arms (EBA) access.This, Cambodia fears, can harm 7,50,000 workers in the garment, footwear and travel goods sector and three million families, lead to large job losses and would not serve the EBA program’s objective of poverty eradication and sustainable development.

Concessions offered through EBA had lifted millions of Cambodians out of poverty and significantly contributed to Cambodia’s economic and social development. Of exports from Cambodia to the EU last year, more than 95 per cent were included under the EBA. Workers, unionists and others benefiting from the EBA program would like to see the EU maintain Cambodia’s EBA access.

Three areas of concern initially prompted the EU to launch the EBA withdrawal procedure in February – political freedom, human rights and labor rights. In the labor sector, Cambodia as complied with EU conditions in dropping charges against union leaders as well as making changes to the trade union law. But the EU needs action on political freedom and human rights, too, and if progress were shown in these areas, the EU would consider maintaining Cambodia’s EBA access.

In three months, the EU will take a final decision on Cambodia’s EBA status.

Textiles are evolving to meet consumer demand for sustainability. Companies want to be seen as being environmentally responsible. It’s about reducing waste during textile production and reusing or recycling waste to produce other products. Rugs and outdoor fabrics, for instance, are increasingly being made with recycled materials instead of new plastics. One effort to help consumers reliably identify more eco-friendly companies is a new level of Oeko-Tex certification, called Made in Green, certifying that no harmful chemicals have been used in the manufacture of a certain product.

A lot is happening on the fashion-design front, too, to explore new, sustainably sourced and even compostable types of textiles. An exhibit of textile innovations in the US included a dress made by a Japanese design team that features naturally glowing silk, made from silkworms injected with a green fluorescent protein derived from jellyfish. There was a prototype for Adidas sneakers made entirely of ocean plastic. Another prototype of sneakers was entirely compostable. There was textile made from algae. Fashion design students are experimenting using milkweed and flax to create luxurious fur from 100 per cent plant material. Another student design team has come up with the idea for a spandex-type elastic fabric using a protein found in oysters.