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The international textile sourcing
as a topic has become even more urgent since the international trade
quota system for clothing ended. The countries in South East Asia
and South Asia have raised their exports rapidly. Of these countries,
especially India and China are seen as the winners of the liberalisation.
But which specific advantages and disadvantages do these two large
countries have?
The goal of the study now presented by the TU Darmstadt is to provide
information and evaluations on the sourcing of clothing in India
and China. It therefore addresses deciders in the sourcing of the
German textile and clothing branch. The results are from purchase,
acquisition and logistics experts from 42 different companies.
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Executive Summary
The most important results of the study in short:
- China is playing a bigger role than India in the sourcing today
as well as in five years. Nevertheless there are only few companies
with focus exclusively on China. A large part has been active
in India (46%) or China (55%) for more than 9 years.
- The renewed restriction on Chinese clothing exports has not
caused the majority of the companies (63%) to reduce their purchase
volume in China. If anything at all, the finishing has been relocated
in quota free countries.
- Both countries offer the potential to execute the major part
or all of the value-adding activities.
- For the companies interviewed the most important sourcing way
is the direct order at the manufacturer, followed by their own
purchase bureaus. Their own manufacturing and the use of agencies
are basically similar important.
- The experiences with the sourcing in China are rated 'good'
or 'very good' by 60% of the companies, for India the percentage
is at 43%. In both of the countries quality defects are regarded
as the most urgent problem.
- The most important factor for sourcing decisions is the quality
of the products, followed by price and delivery. China dominates
in all three factors. Yet, there is a good perspective for India
regarding the quality.
- The most important factors of the manufacture are the quality
control, a high manufacturing speed as well as the quality of
the manufacturing process. The quality control is equally good
in China and India, in the other two factors China is leading.
The most important advantage of India is its ability of small
lot sizes.
- The most important factors of delivery are timeliness, the lead-time
as well as flexibility. Regarging the timeliness and lead-time
China is ahead of India.
- The fashion trend consulting as an extra service is relatively
unimportant to the interviewed companies. The most important factors
of a trend consulting are creativity and being up-to-date. The
Indian trend consulting is said to be more creative, the Chinese
one to be more up-to-date.
- The transport times from India and China by air or by sea are
about the same. Yet, the Indian transport times keep within a
tighter time span.
- The hung-up shipping is not used by 61% of the companies. The
availability of this service is higher in China than in India
though..
- The availability of surplus services by logistics enterprises
is judged a little better in China than in India. The only important
service is the quality control, in which China is ahead of India.
Textination members can order the results of the study (only in
German language!) by mentioning the keyword China-India via mail
to: news@textination.de.
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Source:
Institut für Betriebswirtschaftslehre
Fachgebiet Unternehmensführung & Logistik
an der Technischen Universität Darmstadt
Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Hans-Christian Pfohl
Hochschulstraße 1
D - 64289 Darmstadt
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