Fashion for Good is expanding to South Asia with the launch of a dedicated regional innovation program.

This global initiative is already active in Asia, having partnered with Hong Kong-based tech incubator Mills Fabrica and is continuously expanding its activities with manufacturers such as textile manufacturer Arvind.

Selected innovators will have the opportunity to showcase their solutions as part of Fashion for Good’s Innovation Day to be held at the Sri Lanka Fashion Week on November 24, 2019. These innovators will also gain priority access to the Fashion for Good program, which enables access to a network of global partners such as founding partner C&A Foundation, and corporate partners C&A, Adidas, Kering and PVH Corp. to name a few, as well as to funding, mentoring and bespoke coaching, providing innovators with the tools needed to grow.

Fashion for Good is actively working on scaling innovations in the region and by catalysing collaborative pilots, which address areas such as making organic cotton traceable and solutions for the treatment of waste water from the apparel manufacturing process. A physical and local presence facilitates a deeper focus on innovators and allows for swifter implementation of pilot programs with partner brands and manufacturers, including targeted connections to corporate partners and investor ecosystems.

India has imposed anti-dumping duty of $125.21 per tonne on jute sacking cloth from 15 Bangladeshi exporters and $138.97 on others. This duty was triggered by a spike in jute import following the imposition of similar duty on sacks and products in 2017. The tariff comes as the value-addition in converting jute cloth into sacks is insufficient.

However, around11 exporters escaped the fine as the Indian finance ministry’s investigations found their shipment quantities of jute cloth to not be excessive.

The development is a big blow to jute goods exporters, who are progressively seeing their export market shrink for a host of reasons including competition from the lower priced polypropylene and synthetic goods and falling demand from traditional markets.

India was one of the largest export destinations for Bangladesh’s jute and jute goods but after the imposition of the anti-dumping duty in 2017 shipments shrank. The latest round of levy would exacerbate matters.

According to data from the Export Promotion Bureau; the exports of jute and jute goods dipped by 20 percent year-on-year to $773 million in the first 11 months of FY 2018-19. The shipment of jute sacks and bags also suffered a 33 percent slump.

Jack & Jones has scooped up awards in three countries.

It was named best menswear retailer in a survey of Germany’s best traders. Germany is the brand’s largest market. The brand’s retail staff mobile app JJ2GO was named best app at the Drapers Digital Awards in the UK. JJ2GO’s success at the Drapers Digital Awards was recognition of almost three years’ work for Jack & Jones, with the mobile app having transformed how the brand communicates, trains and inspires its retail staff. Finally Jack & Jones collected another trophy in Denmark at the Creative Circle 2019 Award Show.

Jack & Jones, incepted in 1990, is one of the strongest jeans brands in the market and is aimed at men 18 to 24 years. Apart from jeans, the brand has diversified into other product categories such as accessories, shirts, T-shirts, pants, shorts, winter wear, trousers and inner wear. The brand is one of Europe’s leading producers of menswear. Over the past few years, Jack & Jones through its marketing activities has built a perception of being a disruptive, rebellious and edgy brand. With its latest marketing campaign, the brand communicates a call to action toward shunning all inhibitions and following one’s gut irrespective of what the world says or its obvious consequences.

UK-based luxury brand Mulberry, which also offers western wear for women, plans to invest further in its new Asian entities during this development phase besides enhancing its global digital platform and optimising the UK network. The brand will focus on international markets besides leveraging its digital and omnichannel network and the recently established digital partnerships.

The brand reported mix results for its 53 week period ending March 2019. Its international revenue rose by 7 per cent to £48.1million, but its UK revenue declined by 6 per cent to £121.6m. Its Adjusted pre-tax profit declined from £8 million to just £1million. This adjusted figure contained £6m worth of costs such as South Korea launch expenses, a profit write-back on the conversion of John Lewis from a wholesale to concession business model (more of that later), House of Fraser administration write-offs, etc.

Mulberry also managed to increase its digital sales by an impressive 27 per cent, helped by the introduction of “important partnerships” in China such as Secoo and Tmall, as well as by its presence on John Lewis’s webstore. Its digital revenue now accounts for 22 per cent of total turnover.

YKK will showcase its latest collection of sustainable trims at the 2019 Outdoor Retailer Summer Market, to be held June 18 – 20, 2019 in Denver, Colorado. The collection includes NATULON® zipper made from recycled plastic bottles.

These NATULON® zippers are resource-conserving, recycling-oriented products made from PET bottles, old fiber and other polyester remnants. 10,000 NATULON® zippers of 60 cm length recycle approximately 3,600 plastic bottles (29 g/bottle). The materially recycled zippers are bluesign® certified The collection also includes the GreenRise™ zipper, made from plant-based plastic, which contributes to the prevention of global warming by reducing fossil resource consumption.

Also included in the collection are environmentally friendly snaps and buttons using a new finishing process that reduces thermal energy, water usage, and toxic chemicals and waste.

YKK continues to reduce carbon emissions in its manufacturing processes, including those that are directly due to manufacturing (Scope 1), indirectly from factory energy consumption (Scope 2), and from material procurement and transportation (Scope 3).

At YKK Bangladesh Pte. Ltd., a hybrid power generation system that combines solar power and diesel power generation was introduced in 2016, which has reduced fuel use by 90,000 liters and carbon emissions by 265 tons per year.

As a result of such initiatives, globally YKK has reduced carbon emissions by 8.9 per cent (estimated) in FY2018 compared to FY2013.

Global denim leaders, brands, retailers and alike will gather at the Planet Textiles Summit on Sustainability that will be held on June 22, 2019 at ITMA 2019 in Barcelona, Spain.

The key point of discussions will include how the denim manufacturing industry should make jeans by 2025? And what breakthroughs in technology and thinking are needed to make this happen?

Moderated by Andrew Olah, the summit will include panelists like Sanjeev Bahl, CEO and founder, of the Vietnamese denim mill Saitex, Alberto Candiani, CEO of Italian jeans maker Candiani Denim Mills, Miguel Sanchez, owner of Gavilan, along with Mike Kininmonth, denim specialist at cellulosic fiber producer Lenzing, which is supporting this session.

The delegates at Planet Textiles will discuss key changes in the denim production alongwith some of other predicted changes in the segment. A proposal to develop a ‘blueprint’ for real change that buyers’ retailers and brands can use as a sourcing guide will also be outlined.

"The ITMA Sustainable Innovation Award is one of the components of ITMA Innovation Lab which brands a series of activities promoting research and innovation"

One of Europe’s largest denim producer, Candiani SpA has bagged the ITMA Sustainable Innovation Award for its innovative product, Candiani Re-Gen. This is a ‘circular denim’ fabric created from regenerated and recycled raw materials.

Fifty per cent of the Re-Gen fabric comprises Tencel x Refibra Lyocell made of pulp from cotton scraps and wood pulp using Lenzing’s efficient closed-loop process; the other 50 per cent consists of post-industrial recycled Candiani fibres. Candiani’s fabrics are also dyed using green technologies, resulting in substantial reduction in the use of water and chemicals in the fabric production and jean washing process.

The two other finalists of the ITMA Industry Excellence Award - Levi Strauss & Co, and Lee – were also praised for their efforts to introduce green innovations into their products and processes.

The ITMA Sustainable Innovation Award is one of the components of ITMA Innovation Lab which brands a series of activities promoting research and innovation. Other components are the Research and Innovation Pavilion, Speakers Platform and the Innovation Video Showcase.

ITMA 2019, currently being held in Barcelona, has set a new record with its number of exhibitors totaling 1,717 from 45 countries.

The exhibits are being showcased over 114,500 square meters of net exhibit space, a 9 per cent increase over the previous edition in 2015. The exhibition occupies all nine halls of the Gran Via venue, including the space under the link way. To allow more companies to participate, many exhibitors were allocated lesser stand space than what they had originally applied for.

Of the total number of exhibitors, over half are from CEMATEX countries; the balance comprising companies from other parts of Europe, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas.

Reflecting the international composition of the participants, the largest number of exhibitors are from Italy (364 exhibitors), China (276 exhibitors), Germany (222 exhibitors), India (169 exhibitors) and Turkey (164 exhibitors).

CEMATEX countries continue to occupy the largest exhibit space, taking up 65 per cent of the total net exhibit space. Italy booked 26 per cent of the space, followed by Germany which booked 18 per cent. The top non-CEMATEX countries are: Turkey with 9 per cent, China with 8 per cent, and India with 5 per cent of the space booked.

The theme of ITMA 2019 is ‘Innovating the World of Textiles’. To support the innovation drive, CEMATEX has introduced the ITMA Innovation Lab. A new umbrella branding of a series of activities, the Lab includes the Research and Innovation Pavilion, ITMA Speakers Platform, ITMA Sustainable Innovation Award and Innovation Video Showcase. Speakers from the industry have been invited to share their perspectives and experiences at the Speakers Platform which will be held from June, 21-25, 2019. A finance forum will also be held on June 21, 2019.

According to C&A’s annual Global Sustainability Report, owing to its use of sustainable raw materials, C&A was able to reduce its global carbon footprint by 12 per cent in 2018. The organisation’s global sustainable materials strategy — driven by more sustainable sources of cotton and cellulosic fibres — avoided 116,000 tonne of CO2 emissions (mtCO2e), equivalent to the yearly CO2emissions of over 70,000 passenger cars.

C&A also saved 1 billion cu m of water – the equivalent of 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. In Europe, C&A sold 95,000 pieces containing recycled cotton and more than 300,000 items containing recycled polyester.

In 2018, C&A also continued its active involvement with ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation), a ground-breaking, multi-stakeholder agreement to improve wages for garment workers, with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Fashion for Good to drive circular economy approaches in the apparel industry, and with C&A Foundation to support systemic and industry-wide change in social and environmental practices.

Seiko Epson Corporation (Epson), the global technology leader, has opened a new textile solutions center called ‘TSC Asia’ at its Fujimi Plant in Nagano prefecture, Japan. Designed to accelerate global expansion of digital textile printing business, TSC Asia can handle every step in the textile printing process including textile pre- and post-treatment.

Like the Epson Group’s textile solutions center operating in Como, Italy, since 2014, TSC Asia will support digital textile printing by conducting research and development and by using actual textile printers to produce samples for customers in Japan and throughout Asia.

Epson is currently strengthening its production and sales organisations to position it to provide products and services globally from both Japan and Italy. Epson started producing some models in the Monna Lisa series in 2018 at its Hirooka Plant in Nagano prefecture.

The company will be expanding its prototyping and volume production operations for large industrial printers, including the Monna Lisa series, with the completion of a new facility in Hirooka, Innovation Center Building B, at the end of March 2020. In 2019, Epson will begin selling these products through its global sales network, which will also offer enhanced customer proposals and broader support.