Deepesh Sharma

After the MFA( multi fibre agreement) era ended in 2005 for bangladesh, start ups in Malaysia started building up as well. (2005-2007) which has hardly reached to its full potential yet. While dealing with trans-national companies most of the brands faces issues of corruption and has shown concern about sustainability.

However, in this business mostly topic of concern is sustainability. Emerging as second big player after china, Bangladesh has developed itself alot since 2005. Question was why china or Bangladesh and not Vietnam or srilanka?

Yes, Sri Lanka & not Cambodia. As most of the firms in Asia doesn't produce and sell directly on market instead they do so through third party.( Indirect contracted manufacturers)

Duties of the firms may vary from design to final production with firms located in different countries which makes a chain. Global value chain.

While china believes in time management labour might be moderate and ease of doing business may attract brands but rentals are so expensive that from China people would find Vietnam cheaper and more cost effective.

But as compared to China, Vietnam would be having less skilled labour. Thus, cmt done in Vietnam will be getting nominal benefits as they will compete to bring margins down.

There would be two major costs for the time being.

•Labour cost.

•Lease cost.

There would no need of 100% manpower at the beginning. It would take weeks to open all stores. As predicted first phase after lift up would be buiness recovery. Agreed on every point but Companies should at least pay #some amount of #salary to the employees so that they could maintain their #routine cycle to some extent. I understand that the cash inflow generated within month is #zero and outflow of cash is as it is. I haven't heard any news of employees loosing their jobs due to this pandemic in Gujarat. Employees being afraid and posting for job requirements is a different #scenario.But employees not getting #paid at least some part of their salary is something management should #rethink upon. We all have #responsibilities towards our company and visa versa.

Lease cost is something we can negotiate with the land lords or the mall management cause #if 30% retail stores get #closed at once than there would be more issues created.This is the time we need to work as #team and negotiate to over come this pandemic after effects.

POINT OF DISCUSSION 

Surviving the present impact on fashion business.

Future impact on fashion business.

Measures to be taken care of; post pandemic.

 What relief should be asked from government?

#Introduction.

 Webinar was held at 1 pm on 17.04.2020. It was interesting to attend as 5 key people of fashion industry came together to discuss the present & future impact of global corona virus pandemic. I have tried to sum up things though it was an hour webinar it took me whole day to create pointers for better understanding.  

Bijou Kurien: independent consultant LVMH Group.

Bijou started on how they see this pandemic and what impact they see on fashion industry.

What 3500 employees are actually doing when the whole country is lock down with stores closed?

Are employees still on company pay roll, any salary deduction done or are making sure they come for reemployment, skilling them to gain something?? 

Planning for aw season??

How do you manage the inventory of the season???

Few brands lead time is pretty long so asked in store inventory on tap inventory supplies made for shipment lying in warehouses or aligning with suppliers itself.

Preserve employment it’s a rather more of a emotional perspective?

What are the points certainly you must consider writing the letter to the government you think apparel industry needs to survive.

What are the changes seen temporary or permanent in the future when consumer starts coming back to stores?

Define the new normal in a more detail of product or pricing and some other implications.

Mr. Bijou Kurien who is a consultant & member strategic advisory board, L catterton Asia (A part of LVMH group) added that right now we are facing is a health pandemic & economic shock while way back in 2008-09 it was only an economic shock.   

Here, I have tried to bring as much filtered discussion as possible in two parts. So i first took the answers of Mr. Shailesh chaturvedi. He is CEO& MD, Tommy Hilfiger apparels, Calvin Klein India and arrow.  He started with addressing about two things,

Issues of life ahead.

Issues of livelihood. 

Short term & long term impact 

 Within these 45 days revenue was zero but expenses were as it is.

 100 days ending June, this season, diwali & wedding this year. Response when the lock down gets over.

Long term: As industry is suffering from commoditization in fashion, have to take care of team & cash flow.

As our industry works on a 9 months cycle, Inventory is heart of the business model in our industry. 50% of the cheques signed are for the inventory somewhere, whether importing inventory, paying to vendors in India it is a large part of the cash flow.

There is spring summer, autumn winter & in between there’s prefall which is early season, so some part of summer goods will carry forward into early fall in india  cutting some prefall goods. Mr. Shailesh further added that we don’t want a brand to panic and give much of discounts and spoil the market. Mr. Shailesh suggested a strategy of hold it, cut it, take it to the next season and hope fully you will get normalize by Feb- march 2021.

Post pandemic Once the lock down uplifts in a staggered manner precautions need to be taken so that customer feels  safe that his or her health is not going to get jeopardise while shopping, making sure employees feel safe as well.     

Smaller shifts to start with, less numbers of staff to make sure social distancing norms are applicable while limited customers allowed into store.

New respect for capital, As people in india has gone on growth through balance sheet not through cash flow

Message to employees or people in the industry is to have to be domain expert in something be good at something small. 

Crises putting focus on working together as a team, Mr. Shailesh further added let’s get out of dooms & gloom & pessimism. 

Mr. Vineet Gautam, country head at bestsellers since January 2010. Did a brief and valuable discussion about this pandemic which came out of the box and china shut its 7000 stores!

It was tough to see India will lock down 1.3 billion people. He added further its 1/6th of the world’s population. 

First thing are employees & customers But the business will take 9 to 12 months to be back on normalcy, where cash is the most important part and safety the next.

Putting 3500 employees in two parts

 Store employees 

Back end of the office

SE: Engaging with them / upscale skills. 

BO: Relook at our business model from back end life beyond the lock down & to plan at numbers to look at the perspective of supply chain.

First responsibility is to protect jobs till the time we can manage to.

Government needs to work on some mechanism to allow companies to get some cash flow or else things will become more challenging where there is no cash coming in but continuous outflow.

Stores will open up in bits and pieces while warehouses might get little operated. As Maharashtra has allowed warehousing in some parts.   

Opening up store at full capacity may take several weeks Like in china it took 3weeks to reopen 7000 stores.

Germany said anything below 800 sq ft is okay above 800 sq ft it is not okay.

Business is not going to be there at 100% manpower.

Demand starts at about 30% and then week on week it will rise.

i .New normal is alot more moving online.

ii. (Hyper local) where customers don’t have to wait for hours. 

iii. Purchase will back up till diwali or spring summer 2021.

“Structural changes are going to happen in the industry“Mr. Amrish MD Ritu Kumar said. Need to recreate employment in long term as soon as possible.   

Season in terms of fabric in india changes in October prior to that little bit of buffer of summers will play its role.

Requirements of credit periods need to be extended.

Requirements of working capital need to be extended. 

Flexibility and insuring that business can get back on their feet so that employees will get back on their feet.

RBI should loose up of what small / large size business have access to.

  Phase 1 will be Store recovery and how many stores can be opened. 

Phase 2 is a bounce.

Phase 3 will be going to a sort of a long term demand curve.

In India online business will definitely grow as a result of this pandemic effect. But are still value discounted economy. We are not china not Europe or USA. We are not full price economy. 

Top end of the market might temper which was impacted during demonetization and now.

People buy things to keep for longer.

“At the backend automation will take a front seat” said dalpat Jain. CFO Manyvar.

 Hangover of corona will remain for some time. It will 12 to 15 months to get back on track.

Mr. Dalpat emphasized more on three pointers 

Safety

Liquidity 

Return

As Bangladesh has provided loan to industries from 2 % to 5% Int. Rate If we write a letter to government, expectations are of some relief on GST.  In the end he kept it short about the impact.

Consumer side appointment base sell.

Safety standards will not become a point of marketing it will become a must have and consumers minimum expectations.

Pricing front Luxury will be at affordable price.

In the end all these discussions by all these industry giants lead to few queries which i thought to bring on the table.

Recreating employment as soon as possible after lock down lifts up, is this indication of cost cutting through reducing employees once store opens up? 

How can fix costs can turned to variable cost?

  Permanent measures once lock down lifts up would be safety of consumers and employees. How many consumers would be allowed at once with proportion to how many employees at a store, so social distancing could be maintained?

As stores will take several weeks to open up and 100% man power won’t be required at first. So will the rest of the employees get paid for that? 

What impact smaller shifts will have on business as most of the business was used to be in evening?

 What about start ups in India?

In the field of construction the owner pays to employees for almost a year.. sometimes, though not having business. But when contract comes the #employees work with all their heart and soul and work for the same company for #decades, shows the trust they have for the company.

Here the catch is one must learn from this thing. I am not telling to pay for a year. But partial if not monthly payments could at least help employees run their family routine who are only depended on salaries provided by the company. #Chucking them up when time is tough for both company and the employees proves the ethics company follows and the working atmosphere as well. Organization doing so are wholly responsible for this specified #wrongdoing.

Mostly employees are afraid of #loosing their jobs due to this pandemic. Vm's/FC/ managers updating status for new jobs now. Not paying the employees at all is not the solution as though employees might come from lower middle class family but it's a white collar business and frontliners work really very hard for it. Every body #understands the seriousness of this pandemic and appreciate the efforts of companies who took decision way before any other Company to Keep sanitizers at stores or shut down stores in the end.

It's a biggest fight since ww2, what challenges we would be facing??

•Government forcing people to be at home,

•Instructions to not to form mass,

•World wide quarantines,

•Nations will be doing resettlement of debts, •Collapse of monetary system,

•Economic depression.

•Millions of people getting unemployed.

•Military taking charge over government.

That all would be a real scenario and not some movie scene, once nation entered the stage 3 and above. Italy having the best medical facilities as compared world wide is facing the biggest challenges ever. People were helpless to be locked down with the dead bodies of their loved ones until they received help from the government.

I must say it's an upgraded (cause mutated would be bit harsh) version of cov family which came in 2003 sars, mers 2012 and sars cov2 now. We all know we don't have proper vaccines available for this yet. So to stay safe one must follow the instructions given by government and should avoid the rumors.

Sars cov2 is detectable in the air for up-to 3 hours, on Copper up-to 4 hours on cardboard up-to 24 hours and up-to two to 3 days on Stainless Steel or plastics. People might notice symptoms within two weeks after getting affected by this virus. So it might happen people might be getting infected and numbers might multiply in near future.

The only thing that could save us is our self-care. Cause in very less time the numbers might be jumping like never before because of the people who didn't took the lock down for serious. We almost had 2 months on an average to be prepared for this pandemic. But now we can only pray to God and follow what our government has planned for our safety.

Initiatives taken by #CMAI is really good for starts ups to some extent as mainly they focus on large quantities. On the other hand factories on international level are providing space by reaching out for small vendors and educating entrepreneurs for required quantity. When from buttons to fabrics everything is developed where the term “sticker” does comes from?

Our international merchandising team is working very hard for our required and planned orders. Internationally developed products are provided at very moderate prices by our brand, providing what market is really paying for goods served by competitive brands explains the whole scenario.

We make sure no child labour is involved and at first labour safety is properly provided before we contract with any manufacturing company. As textile industry is the back bone of many countries, supporting women empowerment child education startups are also contributing in terms of creating jobs (direct and indirect)