Mostafiz Uddin

One thing there has yet to be much discussion about since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic is the issue of waste. We know that hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of garment and textile orders have been cancelled or postponed.

“If you don’t know your own value, somebody will tell you your value, and it’ll be less than you’re worth,” stated Bernard Hopkins Jr, one of the most successful boxers of the past three decades.

In the United Kingdom, they have a small but thriving garment industry in Leicester, an industrial city about 100 miles north of London.

The past two decades have seen the onward march of the corporate social responsibility agenda in the global apparel industry.

Three months after most of the major global markets of Bangladeshi garments entered a lockdown period and closed many of their shops, we are beginning to get a better picture of how the industry might look as we move beyond Covid-19.

We need to do better. We need a complete “industry reset”. We “cannot go back to the way things were before”. I hear all of these sentiments and read about them each day on my various social media feeds. Part of me thinks, “yes, we must strive for a better industry”.

I have posted on social media regularly about the issue of brands delaying payments to suppliers in the wake of growing concerns about Covid-19.

There are very few positives to be taken from the past few weeks as Covid-19 has wreaked havoc around the world, killing otherwise healthy people—and placing otherwise healthy businesses on life-support. In fact, as I write this, a great many garment suppliers globally are in urgent need of their own “intensive care”. Cash is the lifeblood of our industry, and right now, many thousands if not tens of thousands of garment factories around the world are running out of it.

The Covid-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc throughout the global fashion industry. A recently updated report by McKinsey and Company and the Business of Fashion—“The State of Fashion 2020”—states that the global fashion industry will face a 27 percent to 30 percent contraction in business due to the outbreak of the virus.

The building of trust, meaningful relationships between manufacturers and customers in the global apparel industry has played a vital role in the continuing success of the sector.

The world is reeling from the aftershocks of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the effects are being felt across all strata of society.

The current global COVID-19 crisis has placed severe strain upon the apparel industry supply chain, with Bangladesh Ready-Made Garment (RMG) manufacturers and related ancillary industries feeling the financial effects of the global collapse in clothing retail.

What does a “contract” actually mean? I am sure many garment factory owners have been pondering over this issue these past few weeks. Here’s a simple definition of a contract: “A written or spoken agreement, especially one concerning employment, sales, or tenancy, that is intended to be enforceable by law.”

It has taken more than four decades of incredibly hard work to build up the Bangladeshi RMG industry. In fact, the first export-oriented RMG industry of Bangladesh began when Daewoo of South Korea established a joint venture in 1977, almost 43 years ago.

During the course of the last few weeks, some of the world’s largest apparel retailers have announced the temporarily closure of stores across Europe, the USA, and beyond, due to the onset of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Recently, I wrote about how coronavirus (COVID-19), which is now on the verge of becoming a global pandemic, has provided a wake-up call for Bangladesh and its RMG industry.

Never under-estimate the power of marketing and PR. At present, there is a huge disparity in the global apparel industry in terms of who is doing what with regard to sustainability. Some brands are doing a lot. Some brands are doing a little. Some brands are doing nothing at all.

News of another apparel factory tragedy on February 8, which claimed seven innocent lives, throws into sharp focus how much is still needed to be done in the global apparel industry to ensure the safety of its workers.

The corona-virus, which has already killed hundreds of people in China and is now making its way across the globe, will inevitably cause significant disruption to apparel supply chains during 2020. The question is, to what extent, for how long, and how will Bangladesh be impacted?

I want to look at the concept of digitisation in the context of the Bangladesh RMG industry. Particularly, I will argue that digitisation—taking none-digital formats of information and putting them into a digital format—should not be an end goal in itself.