Apparel December 2019 | Página 71

ENTREPRENEUR SPEAK Our journey began from the home textiles and decor market, which became our strength over four decades. Since we understood fashion, getting involved with ready-to-wear fashion was an automatic choice. In order to scale up our business, and add new clients and product categories, we decided to venture into ready-to-wear merchandise, fashion accessories, cosmetics, and more. The journey has been extensive and progressive. We get to work with some great talent in terms of designers and manufacturers who have an eye for design, colour, and creativity. I believe that the craftsmanship available in and around India, especially when it comes to handcrafted materials/products, is among the best in the world. We are already on an expansion mode for all of our fashion products, which will soon include footwear. Sri Lanka has emerged as a garment- manufacturing hub. The Sri Lankan government has realised the strength in its workforce and supported its people to build businesses. Labour, a big component of the product cost, is more cost-effective in Sri Lanka, which helps in offering more competitive prices to large volume-based buyers. Their factories even have systems to support higher quality-control (QC) levels as larger brands are handholding them to upscale their production levels. Thus, we have to have vendors and mills from Sri Lanka in our matrix to offer our clients a wider array of product lines. Additionally, we are aiming to set up a sourcing base in countries such as Turkey, so that we can diversify our offering further. MEDUSA SOURCE HAS RECENTLY LAUNCHED OPERATIONS IN SRI LANKA. WHY DID YOU SELECT THE ISLAND NATION FOR YOUR MAIDEN OVERSEAS FORAY? HOW HAS THE PERFORMANCE BEEN SO FAR? Venturing into new markets and production regions had always been on our cards. We were waiting for the right moment and that came when one of our clients asked us to look at factory options in Sri Lanka. “WE HAVE TO HAVE VENDORS AND MILLS FROM SRI LANKA IN OUR MATRIX TO OFFER OUR CLIENTS A WIDER ARRAY OF PRODUCT LINES.” APPAREL I December 2019 I 69