Garment industry needs new suit

International garment consultant, Peter Wilson, takes a dim view of Trinidad and Tobago’s garment industry which he describes as “lifestyle companies.” “The owners of these businesses are there to provide a lifestyle for themselves and their families and not to develop and keep the business going,” he said in a recent interview. “Once they have a nice motorcar and a house that they are comfortable with and some spending money in their pockets, they are happy,” he said. Business people, he said,  are not really interested in investing in their employees or equipment in order for the company or the industry to expand and grow.

“Give them and their families a lifestyle that they are comfortable with and once they have achieved that, the motivation to expand the business tends to drop,” he said. Companies, he warned,  have to start taking stock of themselves if they want to compete in the upcoming Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). He said those that do not have the sales and marketing capabilities and good niche markets for themselves run the risk of being put out of business. A leading international consultant in the garment manufacturing industry, Wilson is an industrial engineer by training. He has spent most of his life working in garment industries around the world, including  India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China and Syria. He was in TT recently doing some work for a few local garment manufacturing companies with the aim of trying to improve their productivity, competitiveness and overall business performance.

While here, he visited several companies and found at least five of them wanting. In a recent interview Wilson was critical, saying that the local manufacturing industry has to improve in order to compete with other markets around the world. He said the government and other stakeholders did not express much interest in the industry, noting that  this was probably because it is so small and only employs about 3,000 people. His guess is that there is a lack of interest because it does not contribute much to the country’s foreign exchange earnings. Wilson added that most of the large garment manufacturing countries like Sri Lanka; Thailand; Pakistan; Bangladesh; India and Nepal now employ about 100,000 people in their industries.
Successful garment manufacturing companies, he said, are those that develop strong businesses, generate profits to re-invest and have partnership or joint venture partnership arrangements.

He noted that in TT, the industry is not low-cost like in China or India, but he said this should not be used as an excuse not to expand or develop the business. “There is always going to be the opportunity for some of the local companies to find a niche market, which is not based on price. You cannot always base your production strategy on price alone because there will always be somebody cheaper,” he said advising that partnership was the way forward if one wanted to survive in this industry. He cited Marks and Spencer, noting they developed a partnership about 50 years ago with a manufacturing supply base. He said as far as he was aware there were only two local companies in the industry which have niche markets in the custom design and uniform markets. “There is a big market in the Caribbean right now to keep them both very busy. They use all the information technology, website interfaces and they can develop a huge competitive advantage between themselves or against their competitors by using technology,” he said.

On cheaper imports, Wilson said they would always be around, and as far as he is concerned, none of the local garment companies are “professional” enough to advance themselves. “They are making lower value garments like T-shirts and jeans. These are commodity products and will fetch commodity prices.” He said the local companies are always going to be faced with cheaper imports from China and India, because the investments that goes into primary textile production in those countries is enormous. Wilson said while government subsidies could help those companies educate their staff and update their technology, they would still need to invest in sales, marketing and product development and design initiatives.
“There is absolutely no point trying to develop the T-shirt manufacturing industry to be more competitive and productive because they will never be able to compete with prices and products from China,” he said. The same goes for shirts. Locally-made shirts will suffer badly from imports because this is a garment that can be engineered efficiently, he said.
 
Wilson said unless these companies find niche markets and re-invent themselves, they will never be able to compete. He said  they use equipment that is almost 25-years old and have high labour and utility costs. Labour, he added is just a small part of the overall fixed costs. Wilson added that if TT wants to be an apparel-exporting nation, it is going to have to look beyond the Caribbean to export its products. However, he said these local manufacturers also have a problem making deliveries on time, and are often behind on production. “If these local manufacturers were in the fashion industry, they would be dead in the water by now.”

Additionally he said there is very little use of  information technology and computerisation. “There is no production planning, no quality assurance, no stock control or anything else as far as I have seen,” he said. Wilson said if these companies want to be successful in a competitive market, they have to start improving their sales and marketing capabilities. “They have to visit the market to find out what people want. You have to go to fabric fairs to find out what are the latest colour trends, textures and fabrics. If they want to be successful these are the things that must be done.”