Specials

India’s apparel industry faces rising pressure to balance scale, speed, and sustainability with a future-ready workforce. Abhishek Yugal, Managing Partner at Groyyo Consulting, emphasises rigorous workforce planning, stronger commercial literacy, and structured retention strategies. He also highlights the need for public-private collaboration in skilling, while identifying digital fluency, agility, and ESG competence as essential skills for the next decade.

India’s apparel sector faces entrenched skill gaps that limit competitiveness in global markets. The shortcomings extend from factory leadership to mid-level managers and shopfloor operators. Abhishek Yugal, Managing Partner at Groyyo Consulting, argues for a layered approach that aligns leadership vision, managerial capability, and operator agility while tailoring training models to the maturity of each production hub.

Amsterdam-based Makers Unite places creativity at the centre of social transformation, repurposing materials into meaningful design while empowering diverse communities. Creative Commercial Manager Ambrose Jude shares how inclusive practices, sustainable craftsmanship, and storytelling can reshape fashion, shift perceptions of migration, and open new pathways for dignity, opportunity, and authentic connection across cultures.

At the Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics - Autumn Edition starting tomorrow, industry players will be seen navigating shifting sourcing strategies, sustainability expectations, and digital transformation. Wilmet Shea, General Manager of Messe Frankfurt (HK) Ltd, explains how themed zones, global exhibitors, and smart tools are helping buyers discover materials, evaluate suppliers, and make sourcing decisions in a changing market.

Munich Fabric Start’s 2025 edition will transform the global textile calendar by combining four leading trade fairs into a single, integrated event. Bringing together industry leaders, cutting-edge innovations, and sustainable sourcing initiatives, the show will provide unparalleled opportunities for collaboration, product discovery, and market insight across every sector of the fashion and textile supply chain.

India has temporarily suspended its 11% cotton import duty, signalling readiness to address United States trade concerns while easing pressure on its garment sector. The exemption, effective until 30 September, is designed to stabilise cotton supplies, support exporters, and cool domestic textile costs ahead of the country’s crucial festival-driven demand season.

Between 1978 and 2022, China produced more than a gigatonne of textile fibres. A new study traces this industrial trajectory, quantifying production, exports, and stock accumulation while mapping the country’s transformation from labour-intensive operations to a synthetic fibre powerhouse with growing recycling ambitions.

The denim industry’s sustainability discussions often exclude those closest to production, from farmers to mills, allowing misinformation and greenwashing to thrive. Fear keeps suppliers silent, while brands avoid confronting hard data. In this candid exchange with texfash.com, Andrew Olah, Co-Founder of Transformers Foundation unpacks the systemic silencing of suppliers and the urgent need for honest, inclusive dialogue.

Seven denim manufacturers from Pakistan, Türkiye, Italy, and China recently collaborated on measuring and comparing water use in indigo dyeing, and wrent on to establish a shared benchmark. Andrew Olah, Founder of Transformers Foundation, and Rashid Iqbal, Executive Director at Naveena Denim, share experiences and ideas on the backdrop and the project's significance.

A local Australian company, FanFirm, has won a landmark trademark case against the global retail giant, Fanatics. The dispute highlights the critical importance of a meticulous trademark strategy in Australia, as the court's final ruling powerfully affirmed that a local business's first-to-market presence and due diligence take precedence over an overseas brand's international reputation.