How Turkish apparel manufacturers adapt to a more sustainable supply chain model

Turkey’s apparel industry is certainly recognised the world over because of its production prowess and competitiveness. It's the 6th largest apparel exporter on the globe and the 3rd largest distributor to the EU, having exported nearly US$18 billion in 2019 and with more than 10. 000 manufacturing corporations which are supplying some of the biggest international brands and buyers.

The country’s Aegean region is among the most important making centers for textiles and apparel and has a lead role within the Turkish clothing industry. The Aegean Apparel Exporters’ Association is certainly a non-governmental organisation working in close collaboration with the Republic of Turkey’s Ministry of Trade. The Association represents over 1.000 member companies which are located in or around the Aegean region and produce and export a variety of high-quality apparel, with womenswear making up the largest share. Exports by users of the Association total up to US$1.3 billion each year, and its own members export to 154 countries, with 85% of all exports to Europe. The part of the Aegean Attire Exporters’ Association is to market its customers’ manufacturing and export capacity, expand and diversify the number of export products, along with identify new market segments. Seray Seyfeli, Vice Chairperson of the Aegean Outfits Exporters’ Association, tells FashionUnited why its people are ideally placed to meet up the demand of international makes, particularly in a Covid-19 era which throws up fresh challenges around sustainability, supply chains and digitisation.

Compared with many other manufacturing countries, Aegean apparel manufacturers possess many competitive advantages regarding design and production capabilities, because of a wealth of talented designers, a highly skilled workforce and good transfer links, together with generally the sound infrastructure in the region and geographical proximity to the European promote. Fashion companies benefit from a high degree of versatility that our companies offer, this means they are able to produce large and small quantities across an abundance of product categories. Our region is a reliable production partner for most world leading brands and retail chains who are increasingly sourcing in Turkey, and especially from Aegian apparel manufacturers.

Indeed, our place specialises in the manufacture of organic textiles and apparel, and several of our members 've got (Global Organic Textile Standard) Certification and are portion of the Better Cotton Programme. In this respect, our region has huge positive aspects as organic and natural cotton is cultivated here, which means we have immediate access and short source routes, and there are various corporations that specialise in both organic and natural cotton cultivation and garment creation with organic cotton. This likewise feeds into our general commitment to sustainability and reducing the environmental impact of textile development. Recycling of cotton and other materials is also becoming a growing focus for Aegean textile makers, especially cotton, but also polyester, for instance. Furthermore, huge work are under way regarding more sustainable production functions such as cutting water and energy intake during manufacturing, together with the usage of fewer dyes and chemical compounds and reduced amount of industrial waste. They are all crucial advancements which our customers are embracing, and which will become increasingly important later on.

Sustainability is definitely the most important subject on the agenda of our association and almost all of our activities and tasks are implemented with sustainability at heart. We declared the year 2020 as the ‘Calendar year of Sustainability’ for our association and proven a Sustainability Committee and Sustainabiliy Cluster of around 30 companies to handle our activities in this location and implement a sustainable perspective. With financial assist from the Ministry of Trade, we will deliver complex consultancy services for selected outfits exporters for two years to boost their sustainability effectiveness. We are also finding your way through a project which is defined to receive support from EU funds and aims to fortify the entrepreneurship culture in our place. We will facilitate the transformation of sustainability-based business tips in the fashion sector into successful start-ups. Furthermore, we will also continue to collaborate with relevant corporations and institutions to build up new projects. Furthermore, we organise several information dissemination actions such as for example training programmes and webinars so as to increase the knowing of our member corporations in the region of sustainability, to see them about the latest developments and to increase their degree of competence.

Finally, we became a member of the US Global Compact network to be able to support our work in the field of sustainability, to bring latest dimensions to your activities by participating in national and international systems and communicate our commitment to sustainability better.

Before the crisis, the style industry had already started to change its sourcing models, which so far have been characterised by much time lead times, huge order sizes and fairly low flexibility. It had been very clear a substantial shift was needed to make sourcing more demand-powered and more sustainable in terms of both, social and environmental aspects.

The Covid-19 pandemic presents an chance to reshape our business models, our lives and our habits. A demand-driven, flexible supply chain could be more important than ever. Our analysis has displayed that consumers’ shopping patterns are changing - we check out this, for example, particularly in the go up of e-commerce. Logistics are as well changing consequently of all these developments, this means a total re-mapping of the sourcing combine towards a much better model is inevitable. Firms will consider elements such as risk control, costs, cashflow and versatility far more carefully. Integrated benefit chains with an focus on geographical proximity and versatility will become more important. Consequently, sourcing volumes for European trend companies will probably shift from traditional offshore creation centres to extra nearshore countries, predominantly in the Mediterranean basin, with Turkey supplying distinct advantages, as stated above. Closer, collaborative interactions and strategic partnerships will become key, as will a more robust emphasis on progressive products and digital platforms.

Absolutely. Digitisation is paramount since it will inevitably shape our businesses in a post-Covid-19 period. We recognise the value of digitisation and try to support the digital transformation of our people. Pre-pandemic, we would possess normally organised participation at a minimum of three foreign trade fairs and two trade delegations per year. Obviously, because of the coronavirus outbreak, it had been impossible to conduct physical happenings, so we have focused on organising digital fairs, digital trade delegations and expert panels. For example, between July 15 and August 14 we reinforced 30 of our members within their participation in the digital edition of the Global Outfits Sourcing Expo, and we happen to be also planning to organise a digital trade mission to holland and surrounding countries with 25 members between 27 and 28 October 2020. We continue to improve our people’ managerial and operational process towards digitisation and support them actively in adapting to the new world order.

Yes, as the Aegean Outfits Exporters’ Association, we happen to be organising a digital matchmaking event on 27 and 28 October. The goal is to have a virtual platform which includes Aegean apparel companies and brands from mainly the Netherlands and encircling countries such as Germany, UK, Belgium and France. 25 exceptional apparel companies from our Aegean place will attend the event and we expect around 30 selected, high-calibre buyers.

I think it is good to say that this year has been extraordinary and unprecedented on thus many levels. At the start of the year, Turkey’s and our region's export performance was excellent and we saw expansion of 6.7% for the first 8 weeks for Turkey’s attire exports and 11% for Aegan apparel exports. Predicated on these statistics, we expected a continued positive performance for all of those other year. Unfortunately, by the middle of March Covid-19 started to pass on to Turkey, and, like therefore many other countries, we encountered a completely different situation. We felt the consequences of Covid-19 intensely inside our export statistics in March-April-May 2020. Nevertheless, with the rest of lockdowns across the world, and especially European countries, things started to grab again from June onwards. Turkey’s total garment exports heightened by around 10%, and our region’s elevated by 29%. This bounce-back also continued in July, with Turkey’s general garment exports further growing by 8.5% and our region by 17%, even breaking an archive. One of the biggest elements to attribute this to may be the fact that lots of of our companies changed their production and started to export medical textiles to meet the global demand, which includes fueled the expansion of the sector and can be further proof the unrivaled flexibility, adaptability and competence of our member corporations.

Overall, I feel better supplier-buyer partnerships could be more significant than ever. Buyers would want to develop strategic partnerships with flexible, advanced suppliers to create ground breaking new products, and development will dominate every part of the fashion value chain, from design to merchandising and likely to sourcing and offer chain management. Companies must accordingly shift towards a far more agile and smart sourcing model. For us, as the Aegean Clothes Exporters’ Association, I feel our members are preferably placed to meet most of these requirements, and we anticipate building even stronger romantic relationships with our customers.