Apparel Online India Magazine May 1-15, 2019 | Page 23

BUYER SPEAK
potential in India and challenges in
China, the company has decided to
now have a proper sourcing office
in India.
Currently, our total sourcing from
India is about 90% of knits, so
we preferred to have an office in
Tirupur. As far as products are
concerned, 80% is into babieswear
and kidswear and rest is into
ladieswear. Our FOBs can vary
from as low as US $ 1.50 and can go
upto as high as US $ 10 depending
on the product. The current
sourcing in volume is close to 4
million pieces; we expect 2019 to
end at around 5 million, and in long
run (3-5 years), we believe it could
be easily 15 million. The company’s
overall buying from India currently
is less than 20% (around US $
15 million in terms of value) and
which remains the most important
sourcing destination for CWI. We
are determined to grow this to at
least US $ 50 million in the next 2-3
years as in 2019, we will end above
US $ 20 million.
In woven, we are looking to source
both babieswear, topwear for boys,
girls and ladies, bottoms, dresses,
loungewear and denim. The
woven is almost 40% of our global
sourcing, while from India, it is not
even 5% currently. Our order sizes,
irrespective of knits or woven, can
vary from 1,000 to 50,000 pieces
per colourway and that is purely
because we work with all retailers
in the UK.
Currently, we are working
with 10 suppliers, but we
are always looking for good
suppliers; that does not mean
we have an army of suppliers.
We actually want to work with
very limited suppliers and have
a meaningful relationship with
all of them. I guess we are on a
journey to find the right partners
and hope to find them soon. Sedex
is our basic requirement but apart
from that, we do our own social
and technical audit. For license,
we need specific license audits to
be in place, like if we want Disney
product to be made, the factory
should be Disney-approved. Some
of our customers have their own
specific audits and approvals too.
We are also open to working with
SMEs; as a matter of fact, we do
work with factories as small as 100
Team CWI at its Tirupur office
Key
clients
Sainsbury’s,
Nutmeg, M&S,
George at Asda,
John Lewis,
Mothercare,
M&Co., Boux
Avenue, Harrods,
Arcadia Group
and many other
retailers.
Indian
partners
Best Corp., SRG
Apparels, Premier
Knits Apparel,
Dinesh Textiles,
SCM Garments,
SP Apparels, Knit
Gallery, Clifton
Export and
few more.
machines, so factory size does not
matter. It is about the product that a
supplier makes and their intent to be
a partner with us…
We are investing heavily in India as
the country has skill, innovation,
speed and is competitive too. India
will be able to produce a great
quality product for our esteemed
customers. Our focus of investment is
on hiring quality staff and equipment
as shortly we would like to start
doing as many approvals as possible
from India office. This will help us
in managing critical path better and
will ensure we are always delivering
goods on time.
Costs are increasing everywhere; we
just need to find the right destination
for our self which we believe is India.
We found some real supply chain
partners and worked with them to
make sure that costs are kept under
the permissible radar. As a company
we believe that supply base should
be deep, not wide. Consolidation is
the name of the game; work with few
suppliers, but be real partners in
their business.
Majority of Indian companies are
still not investing as much as they
should invest in automation, training,
lean concepts. While advantages are
that we are a very young country
and would have sufficient workforce
for the next couple of decades. We
are flexible in accepting changes
over product cycle, so buyers can
make changes till later stages;
mostly comply with legalities as most
importantly we value relationships
in India.
We are seriously thinking on the
lines of buying some character
licenses especially for India; our
Group
consists of…
Cohen and Wilkes
International –
specialises in outerwear
and activewear
Dennicci – babywear
specialist of the licensed
product
GWG (Great Wall of
Garments) – Daywear,
nightwear and
loungewear specialists
both knits and woven
Blues – Character
licensed product
Brecrest – Specialist in
licensed sports babywear
product supplying the
major UK football clubs
and other retailers
Blues baby – Own brand
of babywear moreover
we clothing range
supplying boutiques in
the UK
teams are already doing research
work on the same. We tried this in
China last year by buying Peppa pig
license for China and that was our
best seller in 2018-19. In addition, as
we have our manufacturing in China
with specialisation in outerwear and
swimwear, we would like to explore
if we could supply the same to some
of the Indian retailers. As of now,
some of our major clients for China
manufacturing are Zara, Tommy
and A&F.
www.apparelresources.com | MAY 1-15, 2019 | Apparel Online India
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