Textiles

If one were to contract the value chain of the global textiles-apparel-fashion industry—for the sake of convenience and debate, the fate of much of the industry would depend considerably on the way fabrics are manufactured and traded. And, if one were to look at the big picture, it would be all about trade. Sure, the global fabrics trade has seen a swathe of changes in this millennium, but the very nature of trade is such that it is fluid. Trade wars and geo-political make it unpredictable. So...

What are your impressions about the ways in that fabric trade has changed over the last 10 years? Could you enumerate a few? The overall industry has seen a gamut of changes over the past decade—be it in product, process and machinery. Let me outline a few: Technological advancements: All players are keeping a close lookout on tech advancements. They serve multiple purposes—from increasing shop-floor efficiency, reducing defects, ensuring streamlining of different processes, and their importance...

How crucial is the role of a designer in a company that manufactures fabrics? In that light, how important is your own role at Arvind? To make a good garment, there should be a perfect match of the fabric and silhouette. That's where the designer's expertise and a keen eye for detail come into play. Working in a fabric mill gives you a great understating of fabric, its properties, the purpose of making it, and being a fashion designer, you possess the ability to visualise and render fabric into...

The suitings segment is one that remains small—almost niche, in a way. It has been so since, say, the 1970s. It has also seen a considerable amount of turbulence—many of the well-known brands that often saw film stars and cricketers endorsing them had almost disappeared a few years ago, as have some companies. But let’s leaves names aside, for they are not germane to the discussion here. What is, nevertheless, pertinent is how players in the suitings arena are dealing with changes in lifestyles...

There are some ideas that never click with the public at first. An American machine salesman and engineer by the name if Whitcomb Judson learnt it the hard way in 1893. He worked on—what was described as—a “clasp locker” and launched the Universal Fastener Company to manufacture his new device. The clasp locker made its debut at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, but saw little success. Gideon Sundback, a Swedish-American electrical engineer, was hired to work for the Universal Fastener Company in...

What is obvious and in plain sight often escapes attention—if you are not looking for it. Home textiles, or home fashion to put it broadly, is something like that. Most of what constitutes home textiles—like bed linen, kitchen linen and bath linen—are used by most people, though the amounts spent on them vary drastically and depend on the means that people have. The “fashion” element, as it were, is a relatively new angle to the concept. After all, human beings have used such textile items since...

GHCL Limited, with headquarters at NOIDA in Uttar Pradesh, is a well-diversified group with footprints in the chemicals, textiles and consumer products segments. The textiles division at GHCL is an integrated setup commencing from spinning of yarn to weaving, dyeing, printing and processing till the finished products like sheets and duvets take shape and are primarily exported worldwide. It is one of India’s leading manufacturers of home textiles with an in-house spinning unit at Madurai, Tamil...

Just talking about trends is one thing; seeing them implemented is quite another. The most far-reaching, yet possibly one of the least talked about, was the crackdown of the Chinese government on polluting factories. Numbers do not easily trickle out of China, but whatever did about a year back ought to have had the global textiles and apparel industry discussing it furiously. In October 2017, many international news establishments reported that over 80,000 polluting units across 30 provinces...

The global apparel trade is made up very broadly of two types of countries—the big brothers like China, India and the United States, and the much smaller ones like Bangladesh, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and others. The latter bloc constituents are similar in nature: they are sure-shot small and hardly grow any cotton worth the name; and their economies are heavily dependent on exports, and in turn on the West. Of these small countries, there is one that stands out: Sri Lanka. The tiny island nation off...

Deliveries of new short-staple spindles and long-staple spindles respectively improved by 8 per cent and 46 per cent from 2016 to 2017. The number of shipped draw-texturing spindles and shuttle-less looms increased by 23 per cent and 14 per cent. Shipments of new electronic flat knitting machines and finishing machines of the category "fabric discontinuous" each rose by 70 per cent year-on-year. In contrast, deliveries of finishing machines of the category "fabrics continuous" rose by 5 per cent...