Spinning mills in Bangladesh are contributing remarkably to the growth of the readymade garment industry of the country. The spinning industry of Bangladesh with 12.50 million spindles is capable of meeting 95 per cent of the yarn demand of the garment sector. Wovens, sweaters and home textiles are mostly based on imported fabrics and yarns, and the spinning industry can meet 40 per cent of their yarn requirements. Bangladesh’s knit and denim garment sector has already developed a very strong backward linkage industry -- spinning-knitting/weaving-dyeing and finishing -- which are mostly made with cotton and cotton blends of different kinds. The cost of cotton is 60 per cent to 70 per cent of the total cost of a spinning mill. Last year Bangladesh, the biggest importer of cotton in the world, imported 7.20 million bales of cotton.

Spinning is a power hungry industry that mostly depends on captive gas generators. It is important for the industry to be assured of uninterrupted power at reasonable cost in the long run. The spinning industry of the country is more than four decades old. But foreigners dominate top positions in mills. Employing overseas persons not only drains out foreign currency but also results in unemployment and frustration for local professionals and technicians.

Future Possibilities, based in the UK, is a platform built by Soorty that travels the world to build dialogue between different layers of supply chain. It presents innovations in manufacturing solutions and technology in a language that will relate to the end customer. The platform is working to carry the sustainability conversation forward, to make it more consumer-facing. It has hosted brands (sustainability departments or denim development teams), schools (designers of the future), NGOs that are working to make sustainable fashion not a choice but the regular way of the industry, collaborative platforms that move fashion forward, and also Soorty’s communication partners who have influence on individuals about the decisions they make and the options they have.

Future Possibilities involves various stages of experiences that engage its audience. The primary one is Soorty’s cotton to garment table which showcases each and every stage of production. The customer/visitor is always surprised to see that there are so many steps involved, that there is so much effort going on at the backstage, and no matter how much it is interrelated with technology, there is still a lot of human touch going on. The second step is Soorty’s denim curiosity table, which shows different responsible materials and manufacturing methods that can be involved in Soorty’s denim production.

Nilit has launched Sensil®, a softer, stronger and more durable version of nylon which provides odor, temperature and moisture management  What truly makes Sensil® different is the degree to which Nilit is working with brands to help them find the factories and mills that can make their product using Nilit yarns. The company had never worked directly with brands before but it saw the need for greater transparency and trust.

Nilit is helping the brands overcome supply chain challenges. Its collaboration with the yoga brand, Avocado helps it to present an exciting product for the end customer. It helps those brands that may have been priced out of premium fibers in the past to find partners willing to help them find cost-effective means for bringing their collections to life.

Further, the company has created a robust marketing program that allows brands to connect to the customer through educational, marketing, and event experiences. Sensil®’s goal is to create a relationship between all supply chain participants and a feedback pipeline from the retailer and consumer upstream. 

Next total group sales are up 2.5 per cent. Finance sales rose 12.1 per cent. Group pre-tax profit was down 0.4 per cent on last year. Retail profit fell 21 per cent but online profit was up 13.8 per cent while profit after tax dipped slightly. The group expects profits to marginally decline by around 1.1 per cent in the current financial year. The company remains committed to third-party label business. While that means it sells brands that compete with its own label, it recognises that customers will go online and will find those other brands somewhere else, so it would rather it finds them via Next than via its competitors.

For the year, Next full-price sales in retail stores fell by 7.9 per cent. Its retail store sales dropped from a year earlier, while online sales rose. This is particularly significant because online sales are now almost as big as those through retail stores and chances are that by next year, they will be bigger. Last year saw it negotiating a rent reduction of 29 per cent on the leases that it renewed and further reductions on leases renewed in the previous year. It expects similar cuts this year too.

North America-based apparel brands and retailers recently launched a new platform, ‘Nirapon’, to oversee the ongoing safety, training and helpline efforts at the Alliance-listed garment factories. A total of 21 global apparel brands with more than a dozen of former Alliance-signatory members, including Gap, Walmart, JC Penny and VF, have joined the locally-managed organisation with the commitment to sustaining the culture of factory safety in Bangladesh. 

The Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety had shut down its operations in the readymade garment (RMG) sector here as its transitional period ended on December 31. Some 29 apparel companies formed the platform in 2013 immediately after the Rana Plaza disaster to improve the workplace safety in the RMG industry. 

Nirapon will monitor the factories from which its member brands source to verify that they continue to meet the National Action Plan harmonised standards for structural, fire, and electrical safety, have implemented standardised training programmes focused on worker safety and continue to make the helpline service, Amader Kotha, available to their factory workers

 Nirapon would serve as a single point of contact between its members and the factories on these issues and would also focus on building local capacity to manage fire and building safety to sustain the investments in worker safety that have been made to date. 

The National Council of Textile Organisations (NCTO) held its 16thAnnual Meeting from March 19-21 in Washington, DC.  The organisation elected Leib Oehmig, CEO, Glen Raven, Inc as its Chairman. Glen Raven is an innovative leader in textile research and development, dying, spinning, weaving and finishing, and distribution and logistics.

NCTO also appointed David Roberts, CEO, CAP Yarns, Inc as the Vice-Chairman of the organisation. A specialty yarn manufacturer, CAP Yarns develops unique yarns for the knitting and weaving industry.

The US employed around was 594,147 people in its textile supply chain in 2018.  The total value of shipments for U.S. textiles and apparel was $76.8 billion. Its exports of fiber, textiles and apparel were $30.1 billion in 2018. 

Jeanologia, the world leader in the development of eco-efficient technology, launched H2 Zero, a revolutionary technology allowing the complete elimination of discharge in the textile industry. H2 Zero manages to eliminate the textile industry’s discharge, recycling the little water that it needs by using a combination of its jean production technologies. This tool has been successfully tried and tested by a few brands. 

The technology contributes to the complete dehydration and detoxification of the textile industry. Furthermore, it allows the industry to grow by 50 per cent for the next three years in its ecological income statement. Jeanologia is the first European company to launch an ecological income statement through which it measures cubic meters of contaminated water that do not go into our rivers and seas, thanks to their technology and services.

Peraga will be held in Indonesia from March 28 to 30, 2019. This is a comprehensive international standard TPT (Textile and Textile Product) industry exhibition comprising Indo Intertex, Inatex, Indo Dyechem and Indo Texprint. These are four interrelated exhibitions. Indo Intertex will display a variety of machinery and equipment for the textile and garment industry. Inatex will display fiber, yarn, fabric, accessories and fashion products as well as nonwoven industry products. Indo Dyechem will display chemical, coloring and finishing process equipment while Indo Texprint will display printing machines digital textiles.

As many as 15,000 visitors, entrepreneurs and professionals are expected. Various seminars are also lined up on topics like sustainable industries, creative industries, and start-up fashion businesses. No less lively will be a competition on fashion design and training on digital textile printing.

In the era of Industry 4.0 factories in Indonesia are updating and using machine tools that are fast, inexpensive and easy to operate and environmentally friendly, and getting more efficient and able to compete. The 2017 and 2018 exhibitions saw an increased volume of business transactions, which is expected to increase at the 17th edition this year. The theme of the exhibition is Making Indonesia 4.0.

For the fourth quarter Guess revenues rose 5.7 per cent. The American retail revenues was down 0.7 per cent, while comps were up six per cent while American wholesale revenues for Guess jumped 19.2 per cent during the quarter. European revenues increased 4.1 per cent, while retail comps were flat. Asia was the strongest market for Guess, with revenues increasing 21.7 per cent and retail comps up 13 per cent during the quarter.

For the whole fiscal year net revenue increased 10.4 per cent. Retail revenues in the Americas fell one per cent while retail comp sales including e-commerce increased four per cent. Revenue for the Americas wholesale segment jumped 13.6 per cent. European revenues increased 14.4 per cent. Retail comp sales including e-commerce increased five per cent, while Asia revenues climbed 25.7 per cent. Retail comp sales in Asia were up 15 per cent.

Guess was also able to expand the company’s operating margin, despite cost pressures related to its transition to new distribution center in Europe. For the fiscal year ending February 1, 2020, the company is expecting consolidated net revenue to increase between four and five per cent and for the upcoming first quarter an increase in sales between 2.5 per cent and 3.5 per cent.

Twenty-two years ago, the fashion market in China was conservative and not very established. But now, the market looks very different. In general, Chinese customers like and want the same styles that fashion consumers everywhere else are into. This is the right approach for western brands looking to break into China. People in China want western product as it is. But it has to be marketed in a way that it fits the Chinese model. Failing to follow this advise is part of the reason many brands have found themselves in hot water in China over the last year or so.

While some of the initial buzz about Chinese consumers in the luxury fashion market was related to their spending outside the country, this paradigm is changing. Half of all luxury spending in China is expected to be domestic by next year. That means, brands that don’t have a physical presence in China will be missing out on a large chunk of Chinese fashion consumption. In response, a large number of luxury brands like Mulberry and Valentino have entered the market in the past year. The luxury goods market in China is expected to grow by about 20 per cent this year.