In a webinar, Sakthivel, President, AEPC said that India quickly emerged, due to the COVID-19 crisis, as the second biggest exporter of medical textiles. The global medical textile industry is estimated to hit 23,752.66 million dollars by 2025, according to estimates.

Sakthivel further said multinational corporations are moving their investment from China to India because of Coronavirus. According to him, this will open up new dimensions to India and the country will be able to collect several million dollars from Europe, Australia and America.

Greg Ruggles, CEO, Several Company Firms, acknowledged clothing companies are searching for ways to switch from China to other countries due to the divergences between the US and China. He said India is able to produce various kinds of textiles. The online company has provided anyone from small retailers to clothing producers with an international forum.

So far, AEPC has trained and employed 12 lakh people across India in the garbage market, according to Roopak Vasishtha, CEO, CDG, Apparel Made Ups & Home Furnishing Sector Expertise Council (AMHSSC). The Council aims to recognize migrant workers who have returned to their hometowns to obtain expertise and to register them with the qualification scheme of the government.

Clothing brand Lovebirds and streetwear label Smokewear have jointly launched a collection of upcycled, gender-neutral basics. The collaborative collection was launched on both Lovebirds’ and Smokewear’s dedicated e-commerce stores this week.

The capsule collection mixes Smokewear’s streetwear style with Lovebirds’ minimal yet sharp tailoring.

ALSO READ Lovebirds, Smokewear launch new upcycled collection

The collection features a cotton shirt, shorts, bucket hat, and tote bag made by gathering scrap textiles from Lovebirds’ studio and weaving them on a hand-loom to create a new textile, with help from Paiwand Studio.

This checkered collection is made from fabric developed from waste scrap fabric from the brand’s studio and then handwoven into this intricate, delicate, and purely upcycled fabric.

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Based in New Delhi, Lovebirds is run by Gursi Singh and Amrita Khanna. The brand retails across India through multi-brand outlets as well as in countries including Russia, Japan, and Italy among others.

Launched as a collaboration between Varun Jain’s Smoke Vodka and Delhi-based Design label Khanijo, Smokewear retails gender-neutral, monochrome streetwear from its dedicated e-commerce store.

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The 3rd Survey conducted by CMAI amongst its members reflects the crisis the domestic garment industry is going through, with 74 per cent of its respondents seeing a 90 per cent drop in sales for the quarter ending June 2020.

An additional 13 per cent indicated a drop of more than 75 per cent. This indicates that 87 per cent of the industry saw a more than 75 per cent drop in their revenues in the 1st quarter of 2020-21.

The projection for the coming quarter (July to September) is equally grim. 95 per cent of respondents expect to operate at less than 50 per cent of their production capacity. Of these, as many as 68 per cent of the respondents anticipate using less than 25 per cent of their production capacities in the next 3 months.

The respondents do not see much improvement in the next 12 months either. 21 per cent of the respondents expect to operate at less than 25 per cent of their capacity in the coming 12 months, and 46 per cent expect to operate at between 25 per cent and 50 per cent. Which means almost half of the Industry expects to operate at less than 50% of capacity in the coming 12 months.

What is obviously adding to the worries of this largely MSME dominated sector, is the drying up of working capital funds, with Manufacturers not receiving payments from the equally stressed retail sector.

Ninety-one per cent of the respondents have received less than 25 per cent of their dues in the last quarter – and close to 85 per cent are not expecting their dues to be cleared in the next 3 months. In fact, 44 per cent of the respondents fear that 20-50 per cent of their dues will turn in to Bad Debts, and another 10 per cent expect even a higher percentage of bad debts.

Reliance Industries (RIL) plans to sell a minority stake in its retail business to Walmart. This as RIL's retail arm Reliance Retail Ventures (RRVL) inked a deal with Kishore Biyani-promoted Future Group for acquiring its retail and wholesale business and the logistics and warehousing business as going concerns on a slump sale basis for a lumpsum total consideration of Rs 24,713 crore. The acquisition would help Reliance Retail’s online segment to build a deep discounting strategy for JioMart, the e-commerce venture that competes with Amazon and Flipkart.

Interestingly, Bengaluru-headquartered Flipkart, which was acquired by Walmart for $16 billion in 2018, said its wholesale unit will acquire parent Walmart’s loss-ridden cash-and-carry business in India. Reliance, which recently launched JioMart in 200 cities, now averages 250,000 orders a day within weeks.

In a string of deals since April, RIL has sold a total of over 33 per cent stake in its Jio Platforms unit and raised Rs 1,52,056 crore from marquee investors and tech majors such as Google and Facebook. The deal with Future Group, adds substantially to the scale of business of Reliance Retail, which is already India’s largest retailer.

According to CLSA, RIL-Future Group deal further cements Reliance’s position as India’s largest retailer by expanding its retail outlets by 15 per cent and retail footprint and warehousing area by over 80 per cent, and will also add 4.1 per cent to Reliance’s market share of organised retail and take it to 17.8 per cent.

Goldman Sachs believes that after doubling EBITDA over the last four years, RIL can double it again by FY25 as the consumer businesses – telecom and retail -- are on the cusp of a strong growth period.

The Cambodian government is preparing five-year development strategies for the garment, footwear and bags sector (2020-2025) to promote their competiveness and added-value, according to the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

Aun Pornmoniroth, MEF minister. said during a discussion on draft strategies that the Kingdom’s garment, footwear and bag sectors have played an important role in contributing to economic development by creating jobs, increasing people’s incomes amd, in turn, reducing poverty.

However, he said with its strong progressing in competitiveness, the sector is now facing some challenges that require more development and more competitiveness by the end of 2025.

To achieve this goal and vision, the strategy will continue to strengthen human resources, increase productivity and create business lines for workers. It will continue to improve working conditions and the welfare of workers, promote direct domestic and international investment in value-added products, attract investment in industries that support the sector and promote export market diversification, according to the brief draft.

E-commerce giant Amazon is focused on digitising micro, small and medium-sized businesses in India and is working on getting more sellers on board and hiring more people.

Recently, Amazon infused fresh capital to the tune of Rs 2,310 crore into one of its India units, Amazon Seller Services, as per regulatory documents. Amazon Seller Services had received another tranche of Rs 2,208 crore earlier in the year.

Earlier this year, the online retail giant had announced plans to help digitally enable micro, small, and medium businesses across the country as part of a $1 billion investment pledge.

India is also the biggest recipient of investments in Prime, Amazon's membership programme under which it offers various features including fast shipping, music and video services, among others.

The company has launched Local Shops on Amazon.in, offering shopkeepers and retailers with physical stores the ability to register to serve more customers from their local areas. Since launch, more than 11,000 sellers have enrolled in the program.

In addition, Amazon has introduced seller registration and account management services in Hindi to help businesses overcome language barriers.

Since launch, more than 10,000 sellers have used Hindi to register on Amazon.in, the statement said.

Sanjay Garg’s clothing brand Raw Mango will participate in the online Selvedge World Fair from September 3 to 5. The fair will feature over 100 artisans and display craft techniques from over 60 countries. On September 5, brand founder Garg will participate in a seminar on contemporary crafts with Amy Revier, Ana de Prado, and Chinar Farooqui.

The brand recently launched a new ‘Botanical’ line of floral print garments and accessories on its new e-commerce store. The collection features Indian flora and fauna with each design first hand painted then digitally rendered onto silks and sheer organza.

Raw Mango also launched a limited edition collection of silver brooches, ‘Taslees’. The three designs, an acrobat, a tiger, and an angel, launched online as part of Raw Mango’s ongoing limited edition objects line.

Despite demand from the major export markets of the United States and the European Union, the industry is not in a position to cash in on the opportunity due to a acute shortage of laborers, mainly tailors. Some units are running with 25 to 30 per cent of the total workforce, and many are coping with even smaller percentage of laborers.

According to data, India exported garments worth $1.45 billion (10,955 crore in rupees) in the quarter ending June 2020, against $4.17 billion (29,008 crore in rupees) in the corresponding period last year.

The exporters maintain there is no dearth of orders from countries like the US, European and Middle East countries. However, they are not taking fresh orders, as they fear their execution won’t be carried out within the stipulated time in the absence of laborers and adherence to the COVID-19 norms. For tailors, the industry is dependent on migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Orissa.

The Indian exporters had started getting many queries from overseas buyers, who were keen to place the orders. However, since the laborers have returned to their native places, the industry is wary of accepting fresh orders. Besides, the workers seem to be in no mood to return in near future because of the Covid-19 scare, thus affecting the production, said Narinder Chugh, Managing Director, Million Exporter.

Neeraj Arya, Managing Director, Different Garments said he was coping with 33 per cent of the total workforce. Similarly, Rohan Dheer, Partner, Puneet Knitwear, said he was working on an export consignment with a 30 per cent workforce.

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TCNS is in the process of closing its export business. With around 2,000 sewing machines and an annual turnover of Rs. 150 crore, the Noida-based company is working with prestigious brands and retailers like Next, Walmart and Monoprix, among others.

The company recently declared that its reported Q4 revenues had declined to Rs 219 crore from Rs 291 crore for Q4 last year. From the second week of March, the company’s partners stopped taking deliveries due to COVID disruptions. Between B2B and B2C, it lost an estimated Rs. 103 crore in revenue. The company has also closed its Bangladesh operations too.