Small export-oriented garment factories in Saidpur, a town in Uttar Pradesh are struggling to recover from setbacks faced during the Covid pandemic when orders from abroad took a steep dive owing to lower demand amid economic uncertainty.
Besides, the lack of work has forced many skilled employees to leave the profession in search of an income. Small and medium enterprises have little access to formal credit as banks worry about being able to recover loans from businesses such as theirs.
Garments made in Saidpur come with a story of their own as the industry took its first steps just a few years ago, when innovative producers started making fashionable but cheap attire, such as jackets, jeans and shorts. Other than being crafted on traditional sewing machines, the speciality of these garments is that they are made using discarded scraps of cloth collected from large-scale garment factories.
The garments quickly gained popularity among the region's poor and middle-income households and then spread to the surrounding areas before eventually making it to the export market. This came as a blessing for low-income people in Saidpur as they could set up their own production unit at home with just two to three sewing machines.
