BUYER BLOG
KNA Sourcing – A buying house with a difference!
Chairman of the buying entity shares his business strategy and future plans …
If the growing popularity of the Bangladesh garment industry in the global arena has opened up new avenues for the garment manufacturers, it has also spurred the growth of the buying entities, with everyone vying to cash in on this big opportunity. But rising competition amongst buying houses, coupled with lack of proper and long-term planning, is proving to be the undoing for many.
KNA Sourcing Limited, started by Md Kayum Mollah( Chairman), Nasim Uddin Mazumder( Managing Director) and Md Arman Hossain – Director in 2013, is an exception though. Seasoned professionals with more than 15 years’ of experience – during which Kayum, Nasim and Arman worked for manufacturing houses and sourcing entities in various capacities, before starting their own business – are treading the path rather cautiously, and with a clear-cut plan.
“ Currently, I am catering to four customers in Europe and one each in Canada and Germany,” informs Mollah, adding,“ We source all kinds of products from Bangladesh for them.” Though sourcing a range of products, bottoms( denim and non-denim) and shirts( formal and casual) are the mainstay of KNA. In bottoms, denims( FOB range from US $ 4.75 to US $ 10.50 depending on value additions) constitute 70 per cent of the total volume, while non-denim( twill, cotton, stretch twill, canvas, etc.) accounts for the remaining 30 per cent. The average FOB of shirts sourced by KNA is around US $ 6.5 plus.
A watchful entrepreneur as he is, Mollah first plans to increase his clientele in the existing markets and serve them satisfactorily before looking for opportunities beyond. It is this very approach aimed at client satisfaction that has now led Mollah to venture into garment manufacturing.
“ We have started garment manufacturing from June 2016 to provide the best of services and
Md Kayum Mollah, Chairman – KNA Sourcing Limited
comfort to our customers,” says Mollah. Located in the garmenting hub of Ashulia, Spartan Fashions( four lines and 250 plus machines with plans to add three more lines soon and a worker strength of 450) produces all kinds of bottoms( denims, non-denims) and workwear. Competitive prices, quality products and an improved turnaround time have been the other motivating factors behind the coming up of the production unit.
Already Sedex certified, Mollah has now proceeded for BSCI and even plans to go for the Accord certification for Spartan soon, which would not only help him to route more orders sourced from the existing clients to Spartan but also add new names in the clientele.“ Most of the bottom orders from clients( for all of which Spartan can fulfil the laid down criteria) are placed with Spartan itself while the remaining orders go to another unit,” he explains strategically. Spartan also takes in orders from other buying houses to fill its capacities. For shirts, KNA prefers to work with only three factories in the country.“ We do not place any orders with factories that we do not know very well. Secondly, the factories we plan to work with need to be fully compliant, fulfilling the clients’ requirement,” states Mollah on the various parameters that go behind shortlisting a supplier unit. Product specialization of each of the factories decides who gets to manufacture which product.
Keeping in sync with future, Mollah has also set up an in-house product development team, to give KNA that extra edge.
“ It’ s a very small team with just three people,” explains Mollah, who globetrots with his PD team to pick up the new developments from various places, and elaborates,“ We travel a lot, attend several events and even see the developments in every mill that we source raw materials from. We also pick up inspirations from our clients.”
Based on the styles and inspirations picked up from various sources, KNA develops its own collection which it presents to the prime clients.“ So they take some from our collection and suggest their own, based on which we come up with even more developments,” says Mollah on a parting note, expressing hope that the new manufacturing unit would help him play around and come up with innovative products to grow his business in the coming days.
24 Apparel Online Bangladesh | AUGUST 2017 | www. apparelresources. com