Indian Ethnic Fabric Buying- Evaluating Vendors

Evaluation of the vendors for Indian Ethnic Fabric is more of an art than a science simply for the fact that there are many soft factors involved. Indian ethnic fabrics are masterpieces generally belong to a particular community who has perfected the art of producing it traditionally. When it comes to dealing with small volumes, you can get very good quality. But the moment the volume go bigger and is limited by delivery timelines, all sort of problmes start happening. Hence it is important to know your vendor before an order is placed with him/her. Generally the crieteria revolves around dealing with the vendors for a few years before making any evaluation.

 

Time of association with the company is a very important factor. The older the vendor/artisan is with a company, he understands the modus operandi of the company, the likes and dislikes and adept itself to work in the way. This leads to saving in time when explaining designs and fewer rejections.

 

Volume and value of the fabric done per year is another factor that needs to be looked into. More volume done with the company indicates the vendor's capacity. Evaluating capacity of an artisan is very different from evaluating the capacity of the mill wherein one can count the number of machines and multiply by speed and efficiency to get the capacity. Generally artisans work in small clusters and the looms/printing tables are distributed over a wide geographicaly area. If a vendor can deliver volume that indicates his relationships with the vendors and his financial strength. In case of Tussars/Bhagalpur silks this is of critical importance as the greige fabric has to be booked in advance of one year and colors are indicated closer to the season. The vendor should have the financial strength to hold on the stock for that period. 

 

Innovative designs shown and converted every year is the vital factor for a vendor. It ensures that his margins keep on increasing, his development costs are low and the company is invigorated by the infusion of new designs. Normally, the time of association with the company determines this factor. Block printing can be done on various textures of the fabrics available. Similarly the designs from the saris can be translated into dupattas and stoles after suitable modification. This ensure that the story of the brand is intact and the same language is conveyed to the loyal customer who flock to the stores to get the quintessance of the the brand.

 

A vendor becomes important if the designs shown by him are impossible or difficult to reproduce anywhere else. That ensures that he gets his desired price points and can dicate terms with regard to production or delivery. It happens in case of traditional wovens and prints that are produced using indiginous techniques like Bagru, Dabu, Jamdanis, Chanderi and Sanganeri Butis.

 

--To be Continued in the Next Post-----

 

 

Supply Chain Risks in Indian Ethnic Garment Buying

Managing ethnic garment supply chain is very challanging as the various people involved are geographically and culturally very diverse and the conditions keep on varying all the time. To forecast and manage the supply becomes very complex as so many factors are involved, I have listed a few factors on which supply chain faces challenges

1. Disruptions

These happen in cases where the design is dependent on the supplier and the lead time is more. As an example there is a supplier of chikankari based in Lucknow, and she embroiders the panels which are cut in Delhi. Whenever she goes on leave for a weak, the whole schedule takes a tumble.Also disruptions take place in South during Pongal and in North India during Eid and Diwali. All these will break the supply chain down. Some of these for example festivals are predictable and precautions may be taken, but the impact is not predictable. For example, we can plan that the production may reduce to half during festive time, but it may as well reduce by 3/4th, which make planning very difficult. For Bhagalpur fabrics, in Monsoons, no dyeing is possible and Monsoon is not predictable. To avoid that the dyeing needs to done before June for the piece dyed fabrics.

Disruptions are also caused when a supplier cannot give the required quality asked.

Disruptions are also caused by the demand. Sometimes the demand go up which cannot be met given a particular lead time for the fabrics and the processes. Sometimes it goes down which may have an impact over the stock situtation at the stores and the suppliers.

Generally this risk is avoided by keeping adequate inventory of high volume high value items. More suppliers are developed for the same product and redundancy is created to overcome the risk. However keeping inventory intelligently is a juggling, a manager is doing always.

2. Delays

Delays happen for all the reasons. Sometimes the styles get closed late. The order can get delayed because of the apporvals of the production and various samples. Orders also get delayed due to interference effect, when a supplier takes the quantum of the orders he cannot digest. Delays are prevented by adding inventory, taking higher lead time and choosing flexibility in the suppliers.

3. Systems

Supply chain also gets broken down by the failure systems, though it rare. This happens when the ERP and computer system doesn't work for sometime.  During inventory checking, no transaction happen and this is a supply chain risk. This risk is mitigated by the manual methods of logistics.

4.  Information Processes

There is a risk when after taking an order, the supplier increases the minimum order size, increases the rate and downgrade the quality. It also happens when sometimes suppliers get inundated with work and sometimes no work so they cannot plan properly.

5. Procurement

There is a risk when supplier increases price, the price of freight increases and sometimes there are inordinate delays in payment to the supplier due to some reasons. This is normally prevented by signing long term contracts, building relations with supplier and using multiple suppliers.

6. Inventory Risk

To manage all the risks above, keeping the right inventory is very vital. But inventory keeping itself is frought with risks. Generally inventory risk is dependent upon three factors: The value of the product, its rate of obsolescence and uncertainty in demand and supply. To manage it the following statragies are used:

- Pooling the Inventory: This is used in case of high value fabrics which are used all across the categories. For example for high value wild silk varieties which are piece dyed, the demand for the greige fabric is aggregated and then orders are released to the suppliers.

- Creating Common Components and Postponing and Delaying the production until all orders are in hand. As in the previous example the order for greige fabric production is given six months in advance to the supplier and the orders for colors are releasd very close to the season.

Needless to say, supply chain management is very complex for Indian Ethnic Garment Retailing as the various weavers and printers are located at diverse locations and under diverse conditions.

Further Readings

How Garments are Dyed Commercially

The garments can be dyed by using pigment dyes. Previously it was condsidered that pigment dyes were non chemically reactive to any fiber. Hence padding or printing with a binder was used. However, now a cationic binder is exhausted onto a garment. This creates an affinity for the garment by the pigment. Then pigment dyestuff is added.

 

Once the pigment dyeing is completed, the garment is rinsed. Then a low temperature or air curable binder is applied to the garments to improve the colorfastness to rubbing.

 

The fastness to rubbing for these colors is satisfactory. However, the colors will washdown during the life of the garments. The higher the concentration of the color, the poor is the colorfastness to washing. However, they have excellent colorfastness to light.

 

Please see the complete process here.

 

Why some prints smell of Kerosene

This smell is normally observed in pigment printing. 

In pigment printing, thickener is used. Two types of thickeners are common. One is emulsion thickener, which has zero solid content in it. This is obtained by emulsification of two immiscible liquids with the help of the emulsifier. Generally Oil-in-water emulsions are used.

A typical recipe of pigment contains 100 parts of binder, 100-150 parts of water, 20-parts emulsifier,  Kerosene or Mineral Turpentine Oil ( MTO) is used which is 750-800 parts. Apart from this 20 parts Urea is added  as hygroscopic agent and 4-6% paste of CMC (10 parts ) is added which acts as a protective colloid. The recipe is ideal for pigment printing. However it suffers from demerits such as inflammable fire hazards, air pollution, high costs and most important of all is the smell of the fabric which is due to residual Kerosene Oil or MTO. To counter these synthetic thickeners are used. These are high weight copolymers of acrylic or methacrylic acid. They come in acid or neutralized form. They do not suffer from drawbacks of the emulsion thickeners, however, they suffer from dull prints and harsh fabric feel.  Also the drying time is longer.  

There are some printers who feel that with synthetic thickeners, there is always a concern of colors spilling over when working with very fine intricate designs and they prefer to use MTO or kerosene.