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O P Prahladka is the new chairman of the Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts (EPCH. He was earlier vice chairman.
EPCH is an apex organization of the trade and industry for promotion of Indian handicrafts.
Prahladka is a leading handicrafts exporter from the eastern region. He is a qualified electrical and electronic engineer and is an acknowledged expert in the use of craft materials like wood, horn, bone, shell, jute, cotton, cotton canvas, leather and other natural fibers in the most innovative way.
Prahladka has been instrumental in the establishment of the National Centre for Product and Development and is founder member of the Handicrafts and Carpet Skill Development Council.
He has been associated with EPCH since its inception and continues to play an important role for inspiring new entrepreneurs in the craft industry. He has played a key role in driving the growth of handicrafts in the eastern region of the country and at the national level by mentoring several artisan groups and new handicraft enterprises.
Export Promotion Council for Handicrafts was established in 1987 as a non-profit to promote, support, protect, maintain and increase the exports of handicrafts. The council has created the necessary infrastructure as well as marketing and information facilities which are availed of by member exporters and importers.
Asian Textile Machinery Expo (ATME) will be held in New Delhi, November 24 to 27, 2017. This is an exhibition on textiles, garment machinery and related services.
The show will be a platform where visitors can have access to modern technology from around the globe and international exhibitors would be showcasing their latest developments to the entire South Asian textile and garment industry. It will provide exhibitors a chance to meet with high quality buyers from India and from China, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, US, Myanmar, UK, Italy, Thailand, Vietnam and the Middle East.
There will be high quality buyers from New Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Mumbai, Panipat, Ludhiana, Varanasi, Jaipur, Meerut, Amritsar, Indore, Surat, Ichalkaranji, Kolkata, Bhiwandi, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Tirupur, Coimbatore, Erode, Salem, Karur, Madurai, Komarapalayam, etc.
The exhibition is supported by various state governments and different associations across the country. One of its aims is to promote the Make in India scheme.
India is the world’s second largest textile exporter.
The Indian textile industry is extremely varied, with hand-spun and hand-woven textile sectors at one end of the spectrum and capital intensive sophisticated mills at the other end. The industry has the capacity to produce a wide variety of products.
Fashion brand Cotton Ink and fashion designer Rama Dauhan have launched a collection for Ramadhan. Available in eleven designed pieces, the collection features kaftans and tops in Rama’s signature drapery style.
In addition to the drapery style, the collection also features a romantic silhouette yet playful design. It has also explored different fabrics, such as cotton poplin, light scuba, organdy, chiffon and textured voile.
Established in 2008, Cotton Ink is an Indonesian ready-to-wear clothing line. It offers women's wear clothing from tops, bottoms, outerwear to accessories.
Cotton Ink is aiming to become the leading Indonesian women’s retailer through its range of trendy clothing that evokes confidence with its simple yet stylish designs.
Rama Dauhan is one of Indonesia’s renowned fashion designers. He believes great styling can empower the look of certain garments. His craftsmanship has a certain quirkiness which is deconstructive yet feminine. He adds small stripes, illustrated patches and prints featuring artwork, which lend a quirky feel to the overall collection.
Mass customization is here.This is an era where clothes are made for an individual’s preferences or sizes. It’s a departure from the model of selling standardized, mass-produced goods that has dominated retailing for more than a century.
Knitting machines weigh as much as a car, are outfitted with 4,000 needles and can manufacture a customized blazer in about 90 minutes.
The process requires little in the way of human labor. After a customer selects the colors, cuffs and buttons of the garment, an employee programs the device to produce a jacket to those specifications.
If even a small portion of a retailer’s goods are made on-demand, it could slash some of their costs, since there would be no risk of getting stuck with inventory that customers didn’t like. It could also allow brands to react on the fly to trends, an increasingly powerful weapon at a time when social media is acting as rocket fuel for fashion fads. And it could help retailers meet the expectations of a customer who is increasingly seeking out one-of-a-kind, boutique-like goods.
The machine is developed by Shima Seiki, knits yarn directly into the shape of a complete garment. In other words, there is no cutting and sewing and, therefore, no seams. The machine, known as the Wholegarment Mach2XS, Shima Seiki covered the cost of the machine for this experiment; Ministry of Supply of Boston footed the bill for its installation and handles maintenance.
Adidas is soon to open a facility that eventually aims to manufacture sneakers that are customized to the exact shape and size of shoppers’ feet.
Cameroon, a central African country is facing enormous challenges in cotton sector. The cotton and textile industry in Cameroon is rather fragile and immature owing to a tiny and underdeveloped domestic market. The sector employs obsolete technology. There is no synchronisation between producers and suppliers, made worse by unjust practices in competition and excessive dumping.
Cameroon’s cotton area covers 85,000 sq kms with approximately 2,00,000 cotton producers and a production approaching 2,50,000 tons a year. Over two million people in Cameroon depend in one way or another on the cotton value chain.
Most of the cotton in the country is cultivated in the north by over two lakh producers. But poverty rates here are high and there is a general feeling of insecurity.
Incentives have been set up for investment, funding bodies, upgradation campaigns and a strategy that will work toward enhancing the value of cotton that is produced in the domestic market.
Other attempts to reorganise the sector include increasing production areas and improved mechanisation, intensifying the sustainable management of soil fertility, increasing cotton oil production capacities, promoting cotton fiber and by-products such as refined oil and cattle feed, mulling the creation of a high-quality cotton brand made in Africa.
India’s apparel exports grew 31.7 per cent in April 2017 compared to the same period last year.
The main reason for this is the Rebate of State Levies (ROSL) on exports of garments. It helped the industry increase production at very competitive rates for a larger share of global markets.
During March to April 2017, Indian garment exporters were able to increase production by around 30 per cent for achieving this growth and employed at least five per cent more workers during the same period.
An overwhelming proportion of beneficiaries of the ROSL scheme are exporters with a turnover of less than Rs 10 crores a year.
The ROSL scheme was introduced in March 2017 initially for three years. The ROSL scheme is in tune with the recognized economic principle of zero rating of export products and in recognition of the fact that at present only central levies are rebated by way of drawback schemes.
Exporters want ROSL to be continued under the GST regime. They feel any dilution in the ROSL scheme will hit the apparel export sector badly, impacting job growth.
The ROSL benefit not only ensured Indian made-ups were competitive in the world markets but also encouraged Indian players to expand capacity to meet overseas demand.
Art Basel has slapped a lawsuit on Adidas. The lawsuit says that Adidas sneakers bear the Art Basel trademark without permission.
Art Basel is a famous art fest. Its name and mark have been used internationally since at least as early as 1999 in connection with art fair expositions around the world and related goods.
The art fest does license partners to use the Art Basel mark. Among these are internationally well-known entities such as BMW, Audemar Piguet watches, and Davidoff cigars. However Adidas does not happen to be on that list.
Art Basel claims that Adidas’ placement of the Art Basel mark on the sneakers, hang tags and boxes, which each also bear Adidas’ marks, deliberately misrepresents an association, show partnership, sponsorship or other affiliation between Art Basel and Adidas and misrepresents the origin of the sneakers.
It goes on to say that Adidas enjoyed the benefits of an exclusive license of the Art Basel mark without paying for or obtaining a license and, therefore, has been unjustly enriched through its unauthorized infringement of the mark.
This is ironical considering that over the last couple of years Adidas has been pursuing litigation and infringement-related lawsuits against the likes of Forever 21, Italian fashion brand Bally, Skechers and Marc Jacobs.
In a deal brokered by the Prince of Wales more than a dozen of the world’s biggest clothing and textile companies have signed a pledge to source 100 per cent sustainable cotton by 2025. The pledge was organised by The Prince of Wales’s International Sustainability Unit in collaboration with an objective to set a challenging target whereby brands and retailers can drive change in the industry. Participants to the sustainable cotton communiqué are: ASOS, Eileen Fisher, Greenfibres, H&M, IKEA, Kering, Levi Straus, Lindex, M&S, Nike, Sainsbury's, F&F at Tesco, and Woolworths Holdings. The pledge encourages retailers and brands to work with existing standards including organic, Fairtrade, and the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), to certify their sustainable cotton. The companies that pledged their support are at various stages of using sustainable cotton, with some just beginning and others, like Greenfibres, already securing all of their cotton from sustainable sources.
The pledge comes in the wake of the announcement that Marks and Spencer and Target have joined Cotton 2040, a new cross-industry initiative to make sustainable cotton a mainstream commodity. Companies who are looking to source sustainable cottonthis cotton 2040 attended the pledge meeting and are helping to communicate with the companies involved on which frameworks are available to companies.
With an additional 10 companies already looking to sign the pledge it will inspire a lot of companies to join, By declaring it publicly there is pressure to deliver says Melchett.
Melchett also commented that he and Marks and Spencer’s Mike Barry collaborated in the belief that improving the cotton supply chain would have a dramatic effect on the lives of some of the poorest farmers in the world and stated that consumers were most interested in the improvement sustainable cotton farming can have on farmers’ lives.
If sustainable cotton is to become the norm, the amount of sustainable cotton grown and bought needs to increase significantly. But pointed out that much organic cotton struggles to find buyers and is sold into the non-organic cotton supply chain.
"While President Trump is working hard to enhance domestic manufacturing, companies such as American Giant are working in tandem to give wings to this idea. The company is pushing manufacturing back to the US home ground. American Giant makes sure that everything in its clothing line is made domestically. The process starts with cotton grown and spun into yarn in the Carolinas. The head of American Giant, Bayard Winthrop, just doesn’t believe in delegating work."
While President Trump is working hard to enhance domestic manufacturing, companies such as American Giant are working in tandem to give wings to this idea. The company is pushing manufacturing back to the US home ground. American Giant makes sure that everything in its clothing line is made domestically. The process starts with cotton grown and spun into yarn in the Carolinas. The head of American Giant, Bayard Winthrop, just doesn’t believe in delegating work. He himself gets involved in production intricacies and frequently inspects his units to see everything is going well. The sources for cotton and yarn are domestic, and the company’s dying and sewing work is also done in the US.
New approach
American Giant, established in 2011, has embraced the rebirth of the ‘Made in America’ movement. Trevor Little, an apparel technology management expert at North Carolina State University’s College of Textiles, has seen success come from the model American Giant is using. American Giant is looking at the whole cost and making smaller quantities and delivering quickly to consumers.
Similarly, Amazon too has its own line of products to compete with brands that are already on Amazon. So, competition is really heating up. On Amazon, one can find a wide variety of hoodies, in the range of $10 or $15. At the same time, American Giant believes that shoppers will continue to order its $89 classic full-zip cotton men’s hoodie. As far as the ‘focused line’ is concerned, the company makes only casual cotton clothes in mostly solid colors that are sold only online, with a lifetime guarantee and a higher price tag than your average chain store T-shirts and sweat pants.
Others follow similar approach
And it’s just not American Giant which is riding high on the domestic manufacturing, the workforce at Eagle Sportswear has almost doubled since it started sewing American Giant apparel, from 98 to nearly 200 workers. Brian Morrell, GM, Eagle Sportswear, says he didn’t want to make the American Giant line at first — too costly and too much needle work is involved but eventually changed his mind. But he continues to try and cut down on the amount of time it takes to make each hoodie. The company has increased efficiencies and changed some engineering. However, the fact is that US manufacturing companies are still figuring out how to make the best product in the least amount of time for an ever-changing consumer.
Making the business of fashion forecasts a touch easier, American international IBM rested their newest technology, IBM Watson to Indian designer duo Falguni and Shane Peacock, for their brand new collection centeredon the theme of ‘Future of Bollywood Fashion’.
IBM Watson searches through large pieces of data for patterns and insights, learning as it goes. Sriram Raghavan, director of IBM’s India Research Labs says that the company began by getting Watson to know fashion in a better way. He further stated that initially they were looking to make people’s retail experience better, and later these same building blocks were used in the design process. Watson understands colours, styles and silhouettes in a very significant way.
The technology, which runs on IBM Cloud, first examined about 6, 00,000 historical fashion runway images from London, New York, Milan and Paris Fashion Weeks. It then continued to analyse about 5,000 images from the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and 2000s Bollywood. The two pieces of research came together to spotlight exactly which trends worked during different periods of time in history, and which ones are going to be the most popular in the near future. On this Raghavan’s pointed out sharing his thought that Watson lets you travel visually over space and time. The company always talk about Watson assisting professional services nurses, doctors, and teachers. According to him what the company is doing for fashion designer is same like it’s done for a doctor and people don’t think of diagnosis as a creative task, they view it as a specialised task. On the other hand talking aboutenlarging the procedure with data and understandings the entire system has been authorizing the designer.
People who are fond of fashion over the world, IBM Watson may serve as ansuccessful time-saver, allowingto manufacture every fashion collection in lesser time. Today’s technology has even used in the whole thing from suggesting innovative food and to recognizing skin cancers, investment examination, and management of wealth.
