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Taking pride in CJ International’ s philosophy of acting as clients’‘ eyes and ears’ and operating as their back office, Roshan’ s next target is to cover Europe and Australia in terms of market.
“ Apart from Scandinavia, we have running orders from France, Germany and Australia and now we are looking at Poland and Russia also,” he maintains. In Europe, Germany is high up in Roshan’ s estimates in terms of potentials, who goes on to add further,“ Germans have more dispensable income compared to many other countries in Europe while at the same time German market is also very price-sensitive.”
The United Kingdom has also been a preferred market for CJ International for long. However, with the British deciding to part ways with the European Union, things have changed considerably now, Roshan feels.“ The effect of Brexit has been across geographical locations. Besides EU countries and UK, it has differently impacted the manufacturing destinations in other places,” Roshan underlines. British Pound and Euro losing value in comparison to US Dollar have had larger ramifications for the Bangladesh apparel industry in particular as it deals in US Dollars.
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“ Bangladesh in a way has become expensive for UK as well as other EU nations to do business with. As a result, manufacturers and exporters have to cut prices and lose margins to continue being in the business,” Roshan reveals. According to him, if Brexit proved somewhat ominous for garment exporters in Bangladesh, it was rather the contrary for Turkey( which deals in Euro).
Despite many European countries successfully carrying out austerity drives, following the economic crises that hit Europe in 2007 and 2009 respectively forcing Governments to take decisive action to improve public finances, push through deep reforms, and establish new institutions to manage and prevent crises better and bring their respective economies back on track – the ripple effects of Brexit are going to haunt the garment industry in Bangladesh for some time to come, so feels Roshan.
Being the one who helped develop the Bangladesh operations of CJ International, which now contributes roughly US $ 50 million in the company’ s total yearly turnover of US $ 100 million, Roshan is not the one to give up on challenges. He is therefore now looking at expanding in USA, where the company already ships caps and few other items to a select clientele.
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ESSENTIALS
Despite having a factory base of over 20, CJ International primarily works with only 11. This is basically to increase order volumes per factory and become a big player in each of them to ensure better quality and enhance social and environmental compliances.
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Well-equipped with a design studio in Sweden, in-house product development teams( both for design and yarn development) and a testing lab( employing a full-time technician and complete set of equipment including an International Lab Standard washer, a dryer, a GSM cutter and GSM weighing machines among others) and it’ s very own knitting factory, Young 4ever Textiles Limited( specialized in all kinds of knitted products with production capacity of over 400,000 pieces per month) takes care of the clients’ diverse requirements. This makes Roshan more than confident about CJ International’ s prospects in the US.
“ We have a winning combination of Swedish, Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan team that brings the technical expertise, transparency and commitment much needed in this kind of operation. Besides, we also have a strong merchandising division and a Quality Assurance department, which visits each supplier almost every day to ensure that the buyers’ requirements in quality and on-time delivery are maintained. To aid our teams, we also have an in-house lab that checks all goods at least three times per production cycle in addition to any buyer-specific requirements,” wraps up Roshan, assuring a full package for all the prospective clients.
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