| | August 20208IN MY OPINIONirst, I must wish my friends from the in-dustry a very healthy and safe lifestyle. By using the word life-style, I have high-lighted the essence of the new nor-mal, never normal and no normal, a much talked about phrase today.It is the change in lifestyle that will be the new normal be it reflect-ed in the way we dress up, go shop-ping, go partying, re-engineer shop floor and travel!Global apparel industry, both retail and manufacturing, has been bearing the brunt of changing busi-ness landscape, and India is no ex-ception. The collapsed apparel retail markets like the US, Canada and the EU ­ which constitute around 85-90 per cent apparel export earnings of India­ have impacted the export revenues of the country, as fashion brands have been continuously ask-ing the factory owners to give dis-counts on undelivered orders. The factories have found themselves in quite a bizarre situation and survival in the long run could be a daunting task if this continues to be the case.Now the time has come when the manufacturing unit should consider business reengineering to cut the dependencies on the external buy-ers. The manufacturing unit has a strong backend to produce for the brands which can give them a long term edge.New-age brands have a window of opportunity this year to set up a strong direct-to-consumer chan-nel and build loyalty. It is time to stop stigmatizing brands because of where they're made and blindly believing that `Made in the West' is always the best.There are international brands such as GAP, Abercrombie & Fitch, Esprit, Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hil-figer and many more that proudly FBy Mithun Bhardwaj, Director, Zashed FashiontechWHAT ARE THE KEY STEPS TO TURN YOUR GARMENT MANUFACTURING UNIT INTO A SCALABLE BRAND?
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