11 August 2017 10:55 am
After Apparel Tech Up in Bangladesh, India, Vietnam and Indonesia, ThreadSol hosted the first edition of Apparel Tech Up for the Sri Lankan apparel industry on 20th July 2017 at Cinnamon Grand, Colombo. The event was aimed to discuss the latest trends in global apparel retail and manufacturing. And subsequently how new age technology like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Mobility can aid Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers.
The event saw a large turn out from the apparel manufacturing fraternity of Sri Lanka with presence of over 90 high management representatives from 42 manufacturing groups including Mr. Felix Fernando, CEO Sirio Ltd, Mr. Rakhil Hirdaramani, Director Hirdaramani Group, Mr. Murad CEO and Mr. Jehan Mutaliph from MAS Bodyline and Mr. Sadiq Omar, Mr. Shiraz Omar and Mr. Hasib Omar from Brandix. The audience also included technology providers – Fast React Systems and GSD.
The event began with a note by Anas Shakil, Head of Emerging Markets, ThreadSol. He discussed the changing landscape of retailers and consumers of fashion products, the inevitable rise of e-commerce and the plausible impact on manufacturers.
He said, “The trends all over the world are changing, Amazon (An e-commerce company based in USA) holds a 6.6pct share of the fashion retail in USA and it is expected to rise to 16.2% in the next 5 years. This impact of fast fashion will greatly affect the global apparel manufacturing. From our analysis of 154 factories across 15 countries, we see number of styles per season are rising at a CAGR of 17.9%. By 2020, manufacturers will have to plan twice the number of styles as they do today, whereas the overall quantity will remain constant.”
This was followed by a keynote by Founder CEO of ThreadSol, Manasij Ganguli. Manasij, a technocrat with 15 years of experience explained how ThreadSol products using AI, Big Data and Mobility can drastically change the landscape of apparel manufacturing in the world.
‘Big Data, Artificial Intelligence are concepts that are essential for the apparel industry to adopt to stay cost competitive. The information is available, just requires the right systems to mine it and use for data driven decision-making. We, at ThreadSol, are committed to continually innovate, to help our customers succeed in a fast-evolving industry’” concluded Manasij Ganguli.