Get into countries other than Europe & North America
Founded in 1981 by Sayeeful Islam, Concorde Garments Group is a market leader in the manufacturing and exporting of garments, textiles, IT and glass products in Bangladesh. It is also a market leader in interlining manufacturing. Fibre2Fashion spoke to Raiyan Islam to understand what gives the company an edge over its competitors, new markets it wants to explore and its future plans.
What has been the impact of Covid and how have you been able to tide over it? Your government has of course been very pro-active in helping the industry through this crisis.
Initially, it was a shock to us as it was to the world, since a global pandemic is not something that most of us had seen in our lifetimes. Orders very quickly dried up due to the sudden drop in demand in the western world. A lot of buyers around the world started to cancel orders.
However, Charles Darwin has told us about the "survival of the fittest", and we have had to think on all angles to prepare to ride this storm.
Fortunately for us, the vast majority of customers eventually took our goods, in a staggered way, which helped with our cashflows in keeping our systems going and paying our workers.
The government's low interest loans did help us with the salaries when there was a slump in orders.
Which are the major markets that you export to and which brands and retailers does this include? Which new markets being explored?
Our major market would be the US, and brands like Arrow, Van Heusen, Izod, Perry Ellis, Walmart etc.
We are very interested to enter other markets in Asia such as China, India, Turkey as well as other countries like South Africa, Brazil, and so on.
What is the annual production of garments | interlinings | accessories at your units? What percentage of the production is for domestic and what per cent is exported abroad?
About 1 million garments pieces are produced per month, depending on the style.
About 3.5 million yards of interlinings are sold per month. 100 per cent of our garments are exported, whereas the interlinings are all "deemed export".
Despite increased competition in recent years, what are the factors advantaging Bangladesh to be the garmenting powerhouse? What are the drawbacks?
Advantages that Bangladesh has are:
Experience of 4 decades of manufacturing and exporting. Now the second generation has come into the business, with better education and exposure about how the world works and where it is heading.
Relatively cheap cost of labour, and a skilled workforce
Big production capacity leading to economies of scale
Some companies which would manufacture in China are interested to shift some of their production to Bangladesh
Drawbacks:
High interest rate of banks
Inefficient ports, roads, and other infrastructure
Bangladesh lacks adequate number of local fabric mills, which is especially important now since buyers want quicker production and turnaround of samples and garments. This gets difficult to do when you are reliant on mostly imported fabrics.
Concept of designing of fabric and garments is still in a nascent stage in the country. In a world of fast-fashion, and quick changing trends, this is an important area for us to develop.
What are the emerging manufacturing hubs for garment manufacturing in Bangladesh? What is the growth that Bangladesh apparel exports is likely to see by 2025?
The government's support of the EPZs and the SEZs in the country, which have a lot of built-in facilities already have been a great blessing for companies with expansion plans.
Other than that, areas such as Mirpur, Ashulia, Gazipur have become major hubs over the years for textile related businesses.
Our industry's aim is to reach $50 billion in exports; we do hope to reach it by 2025.
How does it work at Concorde - do you only manufacture or is your team involved from scratch - the mood board to the final product? Do elaborate.
Initially, most customers would provide us with their designs for us to manufacture. Now it is understood that every manufacturer will have a design team who follows the trends, visits fairs and has to create a new collection for customers every season.
It's been a new learning experience for us over the past few years to incorporate the design element into our organisation.
How sustainable are your manufacturing units? What steps have you taken across the value chain to ensure a smaller carbon footprint?
Generally, this industry has very little footprint, but we have certified our factories with ISO 14001.
The bulk of our "waste", the excess fabric leftovers, are sold to local traders, who take it to some fabric mills, mix it with other such wastes, and make different types of yarn and other products to be used by some people in the villages.
As mentioned above, our interlining factory is the world's first green interlining unit, and it has also been studied, and a report prepared on it, by two professors of environmental engineering from Drexel University, in Philadelphia, US.
What percentage of your revenues come from your apparel side of the business | interlinings business | accessories?
About 50 per cent are from the garments division, and the remaining from our interlinings division.
What is the USP of Concorde Garments with respect to -- apparel side of the business | interlinings business | accessories -- that you believe gives you an edge when it comes to competition both from within and outside the country?
Our USP with regards to our garment division would be a combination of our:
1.On-time delivery
2.High productivity
3.Constant improvement towards better design, fabrics, by following trends, visiting fairs, upgradation of machinery
4.Own interlining factory
All of the above have been learned and gained by us over the past almost 40 years of being in the trade.
Our USP with regards to our interlining division would be:
1.World's first green interlining factory
2.Almost 3 decades in the business
3.The most experienced people in the sector working for us
4.Biggest sales team in the country
5.One of the largest stock of grey fabric in South Asia
What are your future plans?
We would like to get more customers from countries other than Europe and North America, to diversify our geographical risk.
We would also try to incorporate the latest machinery which can aid (rather than replace) our workers and have a more efficient production unit.
We do not have our own fabric mill, hence cannot provide our customers with vertical integration. However, due to our strong links with a lot of fabric mills in Asia over the past 4 decades and our sister concern SSL Wireless' strong ability in technology and payments , we hope to offer our buyers a "virtual-vertical" setup, give quicker designs and get approvals online, as well as link up with their online selling systems for a faster and smoother process flow.
We also are making efforts to work with mills to make smaller quantities of garments per style, as per the requirements of customers for the past few years. (PC)
Published on: 26/04/2021
DISCLAIMER: All views and opinions expressed in this column are solely of the interviewee, and they do not reflect in any way the opinion of Fibre2Fashion.com.
