Shift needed from cut-and-sew mindset to total service provider

Garment manufacturers are told to move out of the cut-and-sew mentality and transform themselves into total service providers to stay in business. “Before 2004, garment buyers gave the factories the designs, the specifications, the colours, the sizes, the fabric and trims and even handled the shipping logistics.

Now things have changed. Garment manufacturers are expected to do all of these things, at least up to the point of design,” said Amal Fernando, a garment industry consultant speaking at a pre-production skills development programme organised by the European Chamber of Commerce of Sri Lanka. It is not just the workload that has increased after quotas were removed. With the increased work, quality levels have climbed steadily while prices are being beaten down.

“There was a time when buyers would accept a shirt that had sleeves of 2 different sizes. Now, being able to ship a high quality garment, on time, at a competitive price is not even an asset. It has become a basic requirement,” said Fernando. The ending of global garment and textile quotas on December 31, 2004, introduced massive manufacturing overhung in countries like China, into the supply market.

This has transformed the global garment trade into an absolute buyer’s market. “Quotas provided a compulsory market. Buyers were forced to come to us because they had no choice. They don’t need to do that anymore because what we have today is known as an absolute buyers market. So now buyers have almost unlimited choices and power to dictate terms,” said Fernando.

So to keep buyers from moving away, garment factories are expected to develop a whole range of new skills on top of cut-and-sew skills. Factories are now expected to find fabrics and trims and produce samples and even go into designing. “The main move is to reduce the gap between the designer and the machine operator.

The clothing supply chain has been divided into 101 operational steps. The factory comes in at step 86. Now, the factory is expected to cover all the other steps up to design point. So the buyer’s design capability will have to be matched by the manufacture’s sourcing capability,” explained Fernando.

Garment factories are advised to aim towards becoming total service providers but are told to take immediate steps to be able to offer ancillary services up to the point of design, as soon as possible. However, this is easier said than done. For instance only on supplying fabric, the factories need to have in-house expertise on fabric, fibre, yarn, special dying, printing and finishing processes and fabric testing, just to name a few of the skills. Limited local manufacture of fabric is another problem.“We have around five fabric suppliers in Sri Lanka.

This is not enough. They are fully booked. So you need to develop sourcing partnerships with supplier networks,” said Fernando.
Building partnerships, says Fernando, will bring better results than simply placing ad hoc orders. Meanwhile factories are told to prepare to face increased competition into European markets when quota restraints on China, by the EU, are removed in December this year.