Technology has changed the whole dynamic of the apparel industry. However, the industry’s construction is still built on sourcing trims, textiles, and findings to manufacturing garments that fit the consumer’s budget. Overseas manufacturing continues helping to keep retail prices low by letting you buy the clothes wholesale now. Technology quickens global expansion; for example, a designer living in New York can easily communicate with manufacturing facilities and mills in other parts of the world and can use the internet to send design specifications and graphics. This article will tell you the working of the mainstream clothing distribution industry.
Clothing Mills
India has always been the leading player in mass textile production. But due to the communication development and shifts in the political landscape, the availability of textiles produced in China and Southeast Asia has grown. Small designers collect materials through textile brokers. Meanwhile, big brand names either have their mills or directly connect with mills that produce custom textiles based on a single design specification. The lower labor cost significantly affects relocating most textile and garment assemblies overseas. There, however, has been a recovery in textile production and garment assembly in the U.S. thanks to developments in manufacturing technology and immigration. Currently, most of the manufacturing phases, particularly for quick fashion, happen in China, India, Southeast Asia, and Mexico, with some garment and textile manufacturing based in Eastern Europe.
Manufacturing
The garment production process starts in the textile mills before it moves on to sewing shops, where patterns are drawn up, and the garment is cut out and assembled afterward. On some occasions, designs and cutting are done in particular shops belonging to the sewing shops. Sometimes, some of the more prominent brand names will merge their manufacturing, but still small Asian, Indian, and Mexican manufacturers make up the majority of the industry. These small foreign manufacturers are skilled in cutting, patterns, embroidery, trims, and finds like zippers, buttons, and belts, which are then sent to the sewing shops.
Distribution
In traditional garment distribution, the clothes go through various global layers of distribution through several brokers who then give the products to the other level of manufacture and eventually classify distribution- this all occurs before a garment reaches consumers in a U.S. retail store. It is necessary that if the garment is more generic, there will be more layers of distribution before the arrival of the garment in a retail store, which includes you having to go through export brokers who sell to U.S. distributors. Huge brand-name apparel companies distribute their products directly from offshore manufacturing to retail. The independent designers are another seller who now takes their products from the offshore manufacturing level and distributes them either on their own or through sales reps that deal with different brand lines that they sell to retailers. The products like jeans or t-shirts that are basic typically get manufactured to be distributed by brokers, who then sell them to distributors of advertising decorators and apparel who imprint patterns and designs before distributing them to retailers.
