Apparel Online India Magazine February 1st Issue 2019 | Page 10

MIND TREE
Q-and-A
January is the time for major industry events like Heimtextil, IIGF, Hong Kong Fashion Week,
etc. Apparel Online is sure that many of our readers visit or participate in such fairs, which
sets the mood for the year ahead. Please share your experience about the quality of footfall,
market sentiments based on your discussion with buyers or anything else of interest that you
observed in these fairs.
Pranab Mahajan,
Director, Mahajan
Overseas (Maspar),
Panipat
In the last few days, our
company displayed products
at Atlanta Fair and Heimtextil.
Overall in international fairs,
visitation is reducing. To be more
accurate, it has reduced nearly
40 per cent or even more.
But our focus is on sustainability,
as we have our certified and
awarded green factory,
product integrity and many
such other initiatives which
have proved fruitful for us. We,
therefore get good visitation
at both the aforementioned
events. Actually, looking at the
current business scenario, buyers
want to work with established
and credible vendors. Our
legacy of 50 years and many
long-term and short-term
initiatives keep us engaged in
business be it in any sourcing fair
or even regular orders.
Sujhoy S Nandy,
Creative Head, Soft
Options, Noida
We are participating in
Heimtextil for almost two
decades and just a few days
back, I returned from the same.
It was quite a good experience
for us as almost 300 buyers
from 80 companies visited our
booth. Though the fair is four
days’ long, I feel that for Indian
participants, it should be for
two-and-a-half days (20 working
hours) as buyers reach at Indian
booths by the noon of the first
day and similarly the last day of
the fair is open for locals. So, on
an average, we had a buyer
every 15 minutes. Though we
met our old clients, there were
a good number of new buyers
too.But overall, we can’t judge
any fair by just buyer’s visitation
as order confirmation is the
final result. We are hopeful that
this visitation will convert into
orders as we met many quality
buyers. We had interaction with
such buyers who have good
purchasing power.
Samarth Sangal,
Founder, Textilestock.in,
Delhi
I have participated in Heimtextil
and visited Domotex. The overall
footfall in both the events
was almost 35 per cent less as
compared to last year but the
positive aspect of this year was
the visitation of quality buyers.
Approximately 25 worthy buyers
visited us and we booked
few on the spot for orders
too. Price pressure is always
there, in fact, it is a part and
parcel of the business. Buyers
want cheap always and they
need vendors to understand
their quality, packaging and
delivery requirement very well.
All this is possible in a long-term
partnership only. At the same
time, I observed that there were
few teams of fake buyers also
who thrive on wrong ECGC
policies and cheating. Next
month I am going to Ambiente
2019 and hopefully I should
have good experience there
as we have a good range of
various products.
Ganesh Kumar, CEO,
A-odds Fashion, Delhi
We participated in IIGF
recently but it was not a
good experience for us. The
organisers had told us that at
least 190 buyers will visit the
show but we hardly saw any
such number of buyers. Even
in our circle of fellow exporters,
most of the exporters had the
same negative experience and
they were not happy with this
edition of IIGF. As overall market
conditions are not so bad,
the event should have had at
least a reasonable number of
visiting buyers.
Vijaya Kumar C,
Manager (Marketing),
GTN Industries Ltd.,
Hyderabad
We just returned from the Yarn
& Fabrics Sourcing Fair, Dhaka.
Overall the show was good
but exhibitors in our product
category(yarns) were quite
few, so for us the show was
comparatively dull. Overall
visitation was good and we
10 Apparel Online India | FEBRUARY 1-15, 2019 | www.apparelresources.com
did meet few reliable and
promising clients. Though we
had expected more buyers.
Apurba Chakraborty,
Regional Business
Manager, Shree
Lamipack, Ghaziabad
I would like to mention about
our participation in GAPEXPO
Dhaka as we are growing
good not only in India but
even in Bangladesh also. We
are participating in this event
from many years and even this
time, the footfall was okay. In
future, we will participate in
more such events in Bangladesh
as we are expanding and
focusing more on many such
products which are allied to our
existing products.
Shalini Agrawal, Director,
Poss Lifestyle LLP, Indore
We have recently started
targeting B2B segment, so it
was our first-ever experience
of participation in IIGF as well
as in any international apparel
sourcing event. We had heard
a lot about IIGF, so we decided
to take part in this show but it
was not up to our expectation.
We met very few buyers from
US and Sri Lanka and they were
wholesalers. Even our nearby
booths in the event had same
limited visitation. Let’s see how
things take place after follow-up.