Fibre2Fashion Magazine June 2018 June 2018 | Page 75

What are the latest technological innovations used
in the manufacturing and designing of bra, bralettes,
boxers and panties?
Most of our technological innovations are focused
around our largest product ranges—boxers and
panties. Adding more functionality by creating an ideal
fit and comfort through fabric features are the main
technological innovations in these categories.
Are you into maternity innerwear?
No, we’re currently not manufacturing maternity
innerwear. However, we are exploring innovative
solutions to provide added functionality to this
category of products.
The lines between innerwear and outerwear are
blurring. Are you working towards designing
products in this range?
Guaranteed that the lines between innerwear and
outerwear are blurring, given how athleisure and
certain intimates such as bralettes which are
considered to be innerwear are also worn as outerwear
in a massive boudoir-dressing trend which has caught
on. We offer products in this range as part of our
seasonal design and innovation offering. To name a
few, we have created fashion bralettes with added
functional support for wearing one for a workout.
What is your manufacturing capacity? Any
expansion plans?
Our current manufacturing capacity from a group
perspective would be 6.5 million units of intimatewear
Most brands turn to Sri Lanka for innerwear due to the high standard in quality and end-to-end solutions. All leading
manufacturers in Sri Lanka boast of very high standards in compliance for their factories as well as employees.
and three million units of apparel every month. Seeing
how we aggressively ramped up over the past two
years given our expansion into Africa and Mexico, for
the next couple of years we will focus on optimising
our growth potential and stabilising our efficiencies.
The growth in capacity will continue to come from the
factories in Africa.
What’s in the pipeline?
In terms of products, we are continuously innovating
to identify and improve functionality. We provide a ‘big
data analytics’ based approach to identify white space
opportunities for brands who want to increase market
penetration.
With the increasing demand of ‘speed to market’, brands are challenging vendors
to improve their product lifecycle management. There has been an increase in third
party service providers catering to provide product lifecycle management tools.
How did you fare in the last two fiscals and what are
your expectations from the next two?
The last two were years of investment and setting the
foundation for our growth to become a $300 million
company by 2020. We made significant investments
in Kenya and Ethiopia and now employ 5,000 people
in the region. We invested heavily in our Sri Lankan
manufacturing arm and in our people by introducing
lean concepts and layouts across the group as well
as investing in sustainability. This has won us a
PVH Human Rights Award and we currently have
the only Green rated factory in Africa. Now that
our investments have stabilised, we are looking
forward to reaping the benefits of the investment
we made over the past two years. We see Kenya and
Ethiopia growing by 25 per cent while the Sri Lankan
operations continue to build on their expertise to
become the technical hub for the group.
JUNE 2018 FIBRE 2 FASHION |  75