The Global Apparel Supply Chain And Its Effects On Sustainability

In 2004, Gap had a supplier base of 1,000, with 3,000 factories in more the 50 countries (www.proquest.umi.com). Products are made in the Americas, Europe, Africa/Middle East, East Asia and Southeast Asia. Gap Inc. has garment factories around the world – from Sri Lanka to Lesotho; from the United States to El Salvador (www.gapinc.com/public/social responsibility).

By the 1990’s, even though a somewhat large percentage of clothing was still being produced domestically, famous companies such as J.C Penney and Gap Inc., started to slowly decrease the number of clothes being made by them in the U.S. They’d still design and market their own clothes but they decided to outsourced production to factories overseas where their clothes were being made at a fraction of the cost (Vatz, 2013). Companies see offshore production as an opportunity to make their business more profitable. Manufacturing offshore offers the ability to produce huge amounts of orders significantly reducing the cost of production. Hence, the reason why a lot of factories have moved to places where laborers get paid almost nothing for their work and the government doesn’t have laws or regulations to protect workers. For companies, it basically means cheap labor and materials and more money in their pockets; for consumers, this means low retail prices for pieces of clothing of questionable quality; and for the United States, it means a decrease in local-garment making industry and less apparel manufacturing

* Products that are commonly imported in the United States are oil, cars, and clothes. These products are very important to humanity.

Exports and imports, which typically defines foreign trade, are the exchange of goods and services between nations and countries. The expression “send out” intends to do or offer abroad while as “import” is to convey in or purchase from abroad. There are numerous purposes behind exporting and importing. For instance, nations send out products on the off chance that it is one of the world’s couple of suppliers, in the event that it delivers the stock at a lower expense than alternate nations, or if it’s merchandise are popular on account of its extraordinary quality. While as a nation imports on the off chance that it does not have the sure item. The United States has laws regarding what’s imported; however, the United States government should regulate imports more heavily because it increases job opportunities, provides a variety of clothing from different countries and drastically increases revenue.

Esquel, one of the leading cotton-shirt-manufacturers in the world came from China and it supplies lots of clothing brand such as Banana Republic, Tommy Hilfiger, Hugo Boss, Brooks Brothers, Abercrombie and Fitch, Nike, Nordstrom and Lands’ End, in addition to private companies (Plunkett Research, Ltd.). However, due to the high demand of the US apparel stores for Chinese products, the low cost, which was the main reason why raw materials are being purchased from China, have increased. China’s competition is huge, with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Sri Lanka also producing material at cheap prices (Plunkett Research, Ltd.). The US apparel stores can instead purchase from these other Asian countries. It is hard to determine the exact number of suppliers in this industry; but, in general, majority of them are in Asian countries that can provide low-cost raw materials to US-based apparel stores. Therefore, the US apparel stores may acquire higher net profi

The biggest import for the U.S is industrial machinery and equipment, of which nearly half is crude oil. In addition to this are imports of fuel oil ($46 billion), petroleum products ($50 billion) and natural gas ($9 billion). Other large industrial imports are iron and steel products ($30 billion), chemicals ($25 billion), fertilizers ($16 billion). There are also many other miscellaneous imports.

Every morning, many women begin planning their outfits even before they stroll out of bed. . Will it be a red or pink top, casual or dressy, jeans or sweatpants? These are just few of the countless decisions to be made that morning. Do they ever stop for a second to reflect on how these clothes were even made? Throughout our recorded history, businesses in many production-based industries faced challenges to meet their supply and demand needs. In the book The Travels of a T-shirt in The Global Economy, the author Pietra Rivoli does a great job with bringing her readers along with her on her little journey that evolved after her single purchase of a T- shirt from a local Walgreens. Upon purchasing the T-shirt she wanted to dig deeper and see where did it all began. Due to her devoted soul she began traveling the world from West Texas to China and even all the way to Africa. This one product was the motive behind her understanding of the entire international trading system and globalization debate that now thousands of individuals are benefiting from. We have

Although the Chinese apparel manufacturers would lose profitability due to rising cotton prices and competition from emerging countries, they stand to gain the most from the removal of U.S. quotas and tariffs. According to the author, in 2007, 95% of the 20 billion garments Americans made were purchased overseas. Due to U.S. trade barriers, China’s share of the U.S. apparel import was only 30%. Once these barriers were removed, Chinese apparel would flood the American market due to their low cost and dominance in garment manufacturing. Experts predict that China could eventually supply 85% of U.S. apparel. As they increase their market share in the

In response to the request of the Director of Sustainable Sourcing Department, this memorandum provides analysis and recommendations on supplier risk mitigation. Government publications, industry reports, newspaper articles, company reports, and peer-review journals were used for this analysis. The five Asian countries, China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Malaysia accounted for 40% of global apparel production and 50% of global exports. External factors may drive manufacturers to relocate due to increasing labor cost, the transition will be unlikely in the next five years. While U.S. based companies are facing various business challenges, the associated risks from sourcing products from Asia can have detrimental effects on both financial and brand image as seen from Nike, Inc. and Mattel. Therefore, establishing supplier credibility and developing strategies to mitigate supply chain risks are important agenda for Target Corporation to avoid potential damage.

NAFTA has also resulted in textile production being moved from Asia to Mexico. In 1980, 83 percent of all US textile imports came from Asia. By 1997, Asia accounted for 41 percent of US textile imports as companies switched their source of textiles from Asia to Mexico. An example of this trend is the US clothing retailer The Limited Inc., which in 1997 switched its source for textile products from Sri Lanka to Mexico. According to a spokesman for The Limited, although wages in Mexico are three time the $60 per month that apparel workers make in Sri Lanka, it's cheaper and faster to move goods from Mexico to the United States than from Sri Lanka. Under NAFTA there are no tariffs on imports from Mexico, but there is a 19 percent tariff levied on textile imports from Sri Lanka. When all

Since 2009, H&M’s actions for a more sustainable future in textile retail are growing vastly. H&M’s goal strongly coincides with the previously mentioned triple bottom line approach: according to Amatulli, de Angelis, Costabile and Guido, “the goal of H&M is to ensure that all operations are sustainable and meet the need of current and future generations along all three sustainability dimensions – the economic, environmental and social” (Amatulli et al., 2017, p.157).

Rivalry among existing competitors: The apparel industry is highly competitive with a great number of both local and global competitors. As the market is mature, its growth is small. Accelerated growth and expansion to new markets are not easy goals to achieve. The barrier to get out of the industry is quite low for distributors, but high for producers. Most fashion manufacturers moved their production base to low-cost countries like China as wage and raw materials in developed markets like Western Europe are high. Besides, there is no great discrepancy in terms of quality of products, so customers make their purchase choices based on price and brand recognition.

According to the data, the total volume of textiles exported from China has started a continuous rapid growth since 2001 (the year of China’s accession to the WTO) as shown in the first graph above, which roughly

Textiles, including readymade garments, account for about a fifth of the total exports to Europe.

The cost is kept low with labor and the production. This helps competing in the export trading world. “I am telling, in textile nobody can beat Bangladesh in price and quality”