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Muslim fashion exporters in Japan are vying to enter the Japanese market for modest clothing despite the relatively small local Muslim population. They believe they can succeed in Japan. As per estimates Muslim population in Japan varies between 70,000 and 150,000 among the country’s total 126 million people. The Japanese fashion market however, is not small and is expected to grow to $72.72 billion by 2020 from $63.72bn last year, indicates data compiler Statista.
According to Japan Muslim Fashion Association (JMFA) president and chief executive Shinichi Orita there is god potential for Muslim fashion exporters in Japan. What makes him optimistic about Muslim fashion is the Japanese government’s ‘Visit Japan Campaign’, and the interest in Japan brought on by the upcoming Tokyo Olympics in 2020; easing of visa regulations for countries with a large Muslim population such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand. All this will increase the number of Muslim visitors and, therefore, consumers.
On the other hand, the Dubai-based Islamic Fashion and Design Council is increasingly seeing demand from Japanese consumers for a more modest trend, as its chairwoman, Alia Khan points out. There is a big overlap between modest and Muslim fashion, Khan says.
Hong Kong-based Li & Fung, one of the world’s leading consumer goods design, development, sourcing and logistics has entered into agreements for a new supply chain relationship with PVH Corp. The agreements transform the current non-exclusive buying agency agreement between them into a new strategic partnership under which Li & Fung will provide additional value-added services to PVH. The new agreement will lead to cessation of existing non-exclusive buying agency agreement between them. The transaction is expected to close on July 1, 2017.
The new supply chain relationship is expected to be mutually beneficial and focus on applying latest technology and knowhow into the PVH supply chain. And as Daniel Grieder, CEO Tommy Hilfiger Global and PVH Europe said the focus of his company was to create a more effective and efficient supply chain that would enable them to adapt and evolve so that it could stay ahead in the rapidly changing industry. This transformation in the company’s sourcing strategy is an important step to improve speed to market and faster integration of consumer insights into our new collections.
US-based PVH Corp has a diversified portfolio of brands including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Van Heusen, IZOD, ARROW, Speedo, Warner's and Olga and numerous other owned and licensed brands and markets them globally. PVH has 30,000 associates operating across 40 countries and speaking 20 languages. In 2015, the company generated over $8 billion in revenues.
The Kenyan ministry of Industry and trade says it is enhancing partnerships with local textile and apparel sector in a bid to improve quality of products. The partnership between the government and private sector is aimed at fast-tracking the ‘Buy Kenyan, Build Kenya’ initiative, says C S Adan Mohamed.
In its latest move duties and taxes on apparel, clothing and garments made in Export Processing Zone have been waived. So the products can now be sold in local Kenyan market without VAT and duties. Speaking during a tour of Athi River-based Hela Clothing, Mohamed said they are getting this good news at a time when the global textile and apparel industry is facing tough times due to uncertainties in the global economy.
The $6 million undergarment production facility has so far exported $1.5 million worth of undergarments in six months to US clothing conglomerate Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation through its well known brands such as Calvin Klein and Victoria Secrets. This is the country’s first undergarment production facility which is also aimed at slicing Kenya’s clothing import bill currently at over $815 million. The ministry is gearing up to host a clothing fair from March 29 to 31 at the KICC grounds. The exhibition will showcase high fashion, top quality apparels including trousers, shirts, jeans, jackets and undergarments.
"China is the perfect country for the world’s big sportswear brands with just the right mix of ingredients to fuel businesses in future. For athletic wear companies including Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and Under Armour, as well as activewear brands such as Lululemon, China offers the perfect market with its 415 million millennials; a booming middle class getting interested in health and fitness; government investment in sports; and a rapidly growing consumer appetite for sportswear—especially foreign brands."
China is the perfect country for the world’s big sportswear brands with just the right mix of ingredients to fuel businesses in future. For athletic wear companies including Nike, Adidas, New Balance, and Under Armour, as well as activewear brands such as Lululemon, China offers the perfect market with its 415 million millennials; a booming middle class getting interested in health and fitness; government investment in sports; and a rapidly growing consumer appetite for sportswear—especially foreign brands.
The US is still counted as the biggest market for sportswear. But it’s a mature and fiercely competitive one, much like Western Europe. In China, the rising tide is lifting all boats, even with increasing competition in the country’s sportswear sector. And brands have been cashing in. Nike, for instance, recorded growth of about 9.5 per cent last quarter in China. Adidas saw its sales jump 22 per cent in the country through 2016. This is just the start, believes Mark Parker, CEO, Nike. The opportunity is massive in China, according to Nike brand president Trevor Edwards.
Factors driving growth
China has 415 million millennials, according to a 2015 report by Goldman Sachs—exceeding the 350 million or so people who make up the entire working populations of the US and Western Europe combined. China has the world’s largest middle class, and it’s still growing. Goldman Sachs estimates that the country’s aggregate income will grow by around $3 trillion in the next decade.
China’s millennial generation is different from the one that preceded it. It’s more globally connected because of technology, and has a strong consumer appetite, matched by rising purchasing power. Aided by economic development, there has been a substantial growth in new activities, especially sports. Gym membership in China has doubled since 2008, reveal figures from China Business Research Academy reported by (paywall) the Financial Times. And the number of marathons taking place in the country has grown six-fold over the past five years.
In order to become a global soccer superpower, China’s government has pledged to have more than 70,000 soccer pitches ready across the country by 2020. To accomplish the goal, Chinese president Xi Jinping announced plans to expand the country’s ‘sport economy’ to $850 billion by 2025, which would make it the world’s largest. The Chinese Government’s push for sports isn’t just about bragging rights. To reduce rising rates of health problems such as obesity and diabetes, it has also urged citizens to be more physically active. The country launched a national fitness plan through 2020 that will involve significant investment in sport and fitness facilities.
Growing expanse of activewear
Euromonitor figures show last year, sales of sportswear jumped 11 per cent in China, while overall apparel sales rose just 5 per cent. Like countless shoppers around the US and Europe, Chinese consumers are developing a taste for activewear as everyday clothing. Colin Currie, Adidas’s MD for Greater China, says that consumers want a versatile piece of footwear, or they want apparel they can do sports in but also go to social occasions in. looking at the growing potential, Euromonitor estimates that China’s market for sportswear will surpass that for luxury goods by 2020.
Mid-market brands, such as China’s homegrown sports label Anta, could be the biggest beneficiaries of the new Chinese athleticism, since foreign brands such as Adidas and Nike are seen as fashion products as much as fitness ones. But Chinese shoppers also want the brand prestige and perceived quality of foreign labels, which gives companies such as Nike and Adidas an advantage over domestic rivals. Those two companies are actually China’s top sportswear brands by market share.
Trade unions in Indonesia want the abolishment of a new law that has eliminated unions’ role in setting the minimum wage and resulted in low pay increases for workers.
Previously, a tripartite body of local government, employers and labor unions determined the minimum wage in each region every year, based on standard living costs.
However, the new legislation has ended workers’ involvement in setting the minimum wage and is based on inflation rates and economic growth. It ignores the regional wage councils, placing all power with the regional governor.
Consequently wage increases for workers in 2017 have been extremely low. Wages in Indonesia are poor. Workers want a judicial review of the law in the Supreme Court.
The lack of participation of unions in setting the minimum wage has had an adverse effect on the minimum wage at the regional level, thus keeping wages far behind in relation to the rate of growth of the economy.
Trade unions say the government is putting business first rather than workers’ welfare. They want to be included in setting the minimum wage, in accordance with the employment law in the country and ILO conventions on freedom of association and the right to organize.
As skin cancer rates have soared and consumers have become more aware of the dangers of excessive exposure to the sun, the market for UV protective clothing has been growing markedly, according to a new report from the global business information company Textiles Intelligence – UV protective clothing: a practical approach to sun care
Expansion in the market has also been due to improvements in the functionality and appearance of UV protective clothing. In the early 2000s, the majority of items were heavy and dark and lacked style and comfort. But many items on the market today are fashionable as well as functional and such garments are available in a wide variety of colours, prints and styles.
In addition, the range of clothing items available has grown to include athletic wear, casual wear and outdoor sports wear. In the case of athletic wear and outdoor sports wear in particular, UV protective clothing is now being worn for a wide range of activities including climbing, cycling, fishing, football, golf, hiking, kayaking, sailing, skiing, surfing, swimming and tennis.
UV protective garments on offer at the premium end of the market boast of a number of performance features in addition to UV protection including antimicrobial action, comfort stretch and moisture management. Some of these products are also highly versatile as they can be worn as casual wear, sportswear and even fashion wear.
Reflecting these developments, UV protective garments and accessories are sold by well established clothing brands as well as by sports retailers. Also, a growing number of companies in the outdoor wear industry have incorporated UV protective technologies into their collections of technical clothing.
In Australia -- known by many as the skin cancer capital of the world and a leader in the development of UV protective technologies for textiles, UV protective fabrics are employed in a range of technical applications, including high visibility vests and police uniforms, as well as school uniforms.
Looking ahead, there is an opportunity for suppliers of UV protective clothing to increase their sales by reaching a wider group of consumers as people live longer and spend more time outdoors.
With the segment proving to be resilient amid the country's challenging retail environment due to shifting consumer behaviour and preferences for more differentiated shopping concepts, China's sportswear industry should see continued expansion over the next few years, says the Fitch Ratings.
Following the issues of store overexpansion and excess inventory having been resolved since 2012Both international and domestic brands have benefited from the expansion of China's sportswear industry which Fitch accredits to increased investment and higher sports participation.
The State Council aims to develop China's sports industry to CNY5 trillion by 2025 and increase the area available for practising sports. Greater interest in fitness and sports has also become more apparent with more people taking an interest in running, for instance that a total of 328 marathons were registered through the Chinese Athletic Association in 2016.
This attracted approximately 2.8 million participants, and representing an increase of 85 per cent compared with the previous year. Likewise, according to a news report the number of participants at private gyms across China's 70 major cities has increased by 4 to 5 million each year since 2011.
The China market is led by international brands adidas and Nike. While adidas reported over 20% constant currency growth for China in 2016, Nike also saw double digit growth in Greater China.
However, Fitch believes local brands can also benefit, since they offer consumers a competitive value-for-money proposition. For instance, local brand 361 Degrees International Limited (BB/Stable) saw over 7 per cent y-o-y same-store sales growth in 2016 and its trade-fair orders for 3Q17 achieved a high single-digit increase.
Linking their efforts to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as many as seventy one companies have got themselves up to the mark and put their names forward for benchmarking against their peers and competitors in the Textile Exchange Preferred Fibre & Materials (PFM) Benchmark programme.
61 per cent of companies have set targets for switching to a more sustainable source of cotton, three quarters having a specific target for organic.
Said Liesl Truscott, Materials Strategy Director for Textile Exchange, millions of people including cotton farmers, foresters and other textile feedstock providers form the base of the textile supply network and are impacted by the decisions brands and retailers make every day. Influencing improvement in fibre and material production is one of the greatest opportunities textile brands and retailers can contribute to securing a sustainable future.
Preferred is another way of saying more sustainable. Textile Exchange defines a preferred fibre or material (PFM) as one that is ecologically and socially progressive and has been selected because it has more sustainable properties in comparison to conventional options.
The mix of fibres in your product range can be just as important as the sustainability profile of each fiber,” Truscott added.
Textile Exchange recommends a portfolio approach building a suite of preferred fibre and materials from a choice of preferred options by way of the consideration of impacts and product range priorities. The goal is that PFMs are produced to a globally accepted standard, with strict criteria that qualifies the product as preferred, and can be traced through the supply chain.
One of the partnership is with the Appachi ECO-LOGIC Cotton Project in India which brings together a value chain from the farmers to the customers. The key is the partnership and working together – and we see this as pivotal for the entire industry. Seventy one companies, up from 57 last year, ranging from Adidas to Woolworths, completed a bespoke online survey and have received confidential company feedback reports revealing their individual results.An Industry report containing the combined results of all participating companies will be released this week.
The abnormal rise in prices of yarn that shot up by 35 per cent in the last three months is attributed to a direct fallout of the Central government tinkering with its cotton and yarn export policy. And that is the reason why the Karur home textile manufacturers and exporters are struggling to meet orders.
Karur home textile industry fetches foreign exchange to the tune of Rs. 4,000 crore a year. Hundreds of home textile manufacturers and exporters have been affected by the steep rise in prices of yarn have upset their calculations and future plans.
Home textiles products are made from lower count yarn for which the consumption of cotton is high compared to higher count yarn. With spinning mills running short of cotton, they are inclined to produce higher count yarn which leads to huge shortfall of lower count yarn for the Karur manufacturers.
Even if it is made available, the price of lower count yarn is very prohibitive, according to president of Karur Exporters' Association, ‘Atlas’ M. Nachimuthu.
Most of the Karur home textile exporters enter into annual price contracts with their clients abroad and the sudden and steep increase in prices of yarn directly impact them. They are also struggling to meet the delivery time schedule due to shortage of required count yarn and bleeding financially to honour commitments, Mr. Nachimuthu added.
The price quotes of Karur home textile exporters are on a higher side compared to those from China, Pakistan and Bangladesh among other countries who are our major competitors. As a matter of fact, there was every possibility of customers migrating to exporters from competing countries resulting in India losing its global market share in home textile exporters.
On this account, the Central government must seriously revisit the cotton and yarn export policy that was hurting the Karur home textile exporters on a massive scale. The huge volumes of cotton exports done ignoring the demand of domestic consumers such as spinning mills who cater to the requirements of specific categories such as home textile exporters must be immediately done away with. And the needs of domestic spinning mills should be looked into as top priorities.
Agreeing to meet to begin working toward a set of practices that will serve the industry at large, international leaders in the chemical industry for textiles have adopted a tagline that says that the key to a brighter blue is collaboration.
The effort to unite competing companies is part of the mission of the House of Denim, a not-for-profit industry organisation based in Amsterdam and Kingpins Transformers to incite real change that will improve the sustainability of the denim supply chain.
Amsterdam is home to some of the world’s leading jeans brands, but we are fully aware that to clean up this industry, we need to collaborate across borders and involve players from the various stages of denim: this is a complex global industry, said James Veenhoff, founder of House of Denim in a statement.
Although there’s a lot of hard work ahead, it’s exciting to see industry visionaries from as far apart as India, China, Europe and the Americas so unanimous in their support for this direction. We need our leaders to lead – and it appears that this is what is happening, starting from the world of chemistry, he added.
The conversation began during the October 2016 Kingpins Transformers event where chemical experts and company representatives discussed the challenges of providing sustainable solutions. However, they agreed that brands’ and retailers’ well-intended but inconsistent initiatives were creating a proliferation of unnecessary approaches to safer chemistry, and subsequently increasing the complexity of the solution.
Transformers initiator Andrew Olah observed that public opinion and concerns over the environment and safety have done a solid job at ‘shocking’ big brands into action. But to be honest, the chemical side of things is so complex that no company or brand is able to influence things on their own. That’s why this collaboration is so essential for real change to happen.
Earlier events of Transformers covered topics in water, chemistry and waste and have included presentations by Lenzing. The next conference will take place the day after Kingpins Amsterdam on April 21, and will focus on the cost of sustainability.
The first half of the event will invite experts throughout the supply chain to briefly describe what can be done in their segment of the supply chain to make sustainability more accessible, followed by a lively discussion for all to take part. Andreas Dorner, Commercial Director of Europe and Americas from Lenzing, will be presenting on the value of sustainability.
Target has signed on to sponsor the event for the first time, a move that Olah says corresponds with the retailer’s mission to make the apparel industry cleaner.
