Reports

There are many who believe, not wrongly, that the best and safest bet to start an apparel business is with t-shirts. It is a product category that has hardly seen a perceptible dip in sales—right from the 1950s when Marlon Brando and James Dean made them popular, hip and chic. There are far too many angles to look at, and most of them still ring true—some truer then before. T-shirts remain fashion essentials and timeless. They are still a medium of expression, as they were when Disney-character...

If it is readymade, it is quite likely that it is not perfect; not for the body at least. And since the fashion industry virtually stands with a backbone made of readymade garments, the age-old problem suddenly appears to be one of imperfection (in the fashion industry). The apparel sector is seized of the issue, and professionals across the value chain are grappling with a worn-out issue that has found a new fabric. Take two relatively recent developments. In June last year, six major British...

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...

That one form of energy can be transformed into another is a fundamental law of nature, nay physics. So, when someone says that kinetic energy can be converted into electricity, that would raise no eyebrows. But when someone claims to have developed a fabric which does precisely that, many in the textiles industry would be snapped into rapt attention. Such a fabric has indeed been developed by researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. Researchers Anja Lund and...

A new amendment to a European Union legislation has modified several provisions related to textile fibre names and associated with labelling and marking of the fibre composition of textile products. It has also accepted the nomenclature of a new textile fibre called polyacrylate. The new law, Commission Delegated Regulation 2018/122, which entered into force on February 15, amends a number of sections and definitions of the existing legislation, Regulation 1007/2011. According to the preamble to...

A failure to find answers to domestic policy shortcomings that are responsible for today's labour market problems at the local levels could lead to global ramifications, the World Trade Organization (WTO) has warned. Governments will therefore need to meet, talk and negotiate, and arrive at cooperative “win-win” approaches to the opportunities, as well as the challenges, of ongoing global economic change, the WTO's World Trade Report 2017: Trade, technology and jobs has remarked. The 2017 World...

The silver lining that emanated from Gandhinagar over three gloomy, rain-drenched days was as far-reaching as it was clear. The scale of the Textiles India 2017 event, the inauguration by the Prime Minister himself, the ubiquitous presence of a contingent of high-profile Union ministers, and the infectious atmosphere prevailing over the three-day gathering at the sprawling exhibition complex in the Gujarat capital—all point to the textiles and apparel industry being set to get a fillip from the...

Conspiracy theories abounded at the peak of the dal crisis, not all of which were entirely unfounded. Everyone knew pulses were being hoarded, but no one had a clue how this was affecting the entire trade and the market. Could hoarding alone lead to such a shortage that prices would skyrocket so much? Unless, of course, this was being done in a concerted manner. And if at all bigger games were at play, then how did the stage-managed scarcity play out? The income tax (I-T) department’s appraisal...

When dal prices kept rising through the early summer of 2015, those were initially seen as a natural fallout of adverse weather conditions. But once the monsoons subsided, the prices went through the roof, throwing life out of gear. That’s when dal prices hit the headlines in newspapers and dominated discussion on prime time news. The Union government swung into action—first by cracking down on hoarders and announcing that it would import more pulses, and then by increasing the minimum support...

The Goods and Services Tax (GST) is at long last all set to be rolled out from July 1, 2017. What was once much-awaited will now be a financial reality, and GST will be the way forward. There is almost near-unanimity among various sectors of the Indian textiles and apparel industry that GST will be beneficial in the long run, though there are differences of opinion and uncertainty over finer points. The textiles and apparel industry had to wait for close to two weeks after the GST Council on May...