Human fashion trend is changing rapidly. Thus, buyer requirements are gradually becoming very stringent and hard to satisfy. They generally seek the following demands upon the manufacturers or vendors before placing bulk order to any garment industry:
- High quality of products: Buyer always seeks high-quality products and will never compromise product quality anyhow.
- Competitive price: Cheap price is another issue to place bulk order to the garment industry.
- Shipment on time: Garment business is a chain business. If somehow shipment becomes delay, buyer may not grab the rush season. That will incur a loss to buyer.
- Variety of style: Buyer always seeks different sorts of styles to make a variance to their consumers. Thus, vendor should present variety of styles to get huge orders.
- Quick response: Garment business grows upon quick response. You may loss several opportunities due to delay of response.
- Short lead time: It is another term to get bulk order. Short lead time helps buyer to grab the running season.
- Social compliance: Nowadays buyer wants to watch Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities of Garments Company. Thus Garments Company should pay some percentage of their profit for CSR activities.
I have discussed these issues in another article before in brief. Today we will discuss what challenges faced by the garment industries. Many factories of the third world have taken globalization of trade and phasing out of the quota system as a significant stumbling block on the way of their survival in the growing world of aggressive competition. So vendor companies in the developing countries are under tough situations, which are summarized below:
- Quota umbrella and MFA have been phased out: Our garments factory usually got quota facilities considering the least developing country. However, nowadays, many developed countries have denied providing quota facility.
- New fierce competitors are in the market: Some new competitors like Cambodia, Myanmar, Ethiopia already arrived in the market and ready to grab their portion.
- Local protections of industries are being withdrawn: Local factory owners did not get many benefits comparing foreign investors.
- Emergence of new regions under NAFTA and in sub-Saharan Africa enjoying preferences from the USA: To reduce lead time, developed countries are providing extra preference to NAFTA and sub-Saharan African countries.
- Strict compliance of code of conduct: Nowadays buyer does not allow any mercy regarding code of conduct because the buyer has to liable to their consumers.
- Political instability: Political sustainability is another portion to grow up garments business. Political unstable situation brings worse conditions.
- Red tape culture to prolong the system: Red tape culture is another worse system to demolish investor’s mindset.
- Poor productivity for lack of education and training: Most of the workers in our country come from the village. They cannot fulfill the garment owner’s expectations due to lake of training and education.
- Poor price offered by the buyers: Nowadays, buyer behavior becomes a little bit tricky. They often offer reduced prices considering the increase of competitors.
- Safety issues inspected by BSCI, Accrued & Alliance: Buyer becomes very strictly regarding safety issues. Garment owners who wish to get bulk order should have BSCI, Accrued & Alliance audit certificate.
- Insufficient power supply: It is one of another obstacle for garment owners. The government cannot provide sufficient power supply to the apparel industry. Insufficient power supply hampers productivity.
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