100 delegates attend 'New Economics of Fashion' workshop

Fibre2fashion in association with Infor, one of the world’s largest suppliers of enterprise application solutions and services to the Fashion industry, and Brandix i3, an Infor Global Alliance and Direct Services Partner, organized a workshop “Fashionomics 2014 – The New Economics of Fashion” on March 20, 2014 at Dhaka – Bangladesh.

This by-invitation only workshop witnessed attendance from over 100 delegates, including senior management, officials and professionals, representing various apparel manufacturing companies, brands and retailers based in Bangladesh.

The panel on the dais included Mr Robert Mckee - Infor’s Global Fashion Industry Strategy Director, Mr Niranjan Vaidyakularatne, Head of Consulting at Brandix i3, Sri Lanka, Mr Piyush Vyas, CEO - BD Designs Pvt. Ltd., Bangladesh, Mr Syed Naved Husain, CEO of Beximco, Mr Syed Ishtiaq Alam, Director at Ananta Group and Dr Abu Sadat Muhammad Sayem, Associate Professor - Department of Textile Engineering at South East University.

The workshop began with a welcome speech from Mr Vyas who said, “Bangladesh is still the hotspot for apparel sourcing and will remain one of the leaders in apparel production in the coming decades”.

Next was Mr Vaidyakularatne, who introduced Brandix i3, which is a business improvement and enterprise application specialist firm compromising of more than 170 multi-skilled professionals and also is a Infor Global Alliance direct service partner. He explained technical & business features of Infor M3 & HCM system.

Mr McKee – the keynote speaker who is also known as an ‘Industry Guru’ gave a presentation on the theme of the workshop ‘Fashionomics 2014 – The New Economics of Fashion’.

He gave an introduction on Infor M3 ERP system and discussed its strategical strengths and key benefits. He talked about operational dynamicity, assumption of consumers demand & multi channel consumer interaction, relation between manufacturer-consumer & manufacturer-buyer & their impact on business.

He concluded by saying, “Smart technology is essential to have a profitable fashion business”.

Mr Naved Husain and Mr Ishtiaq focused on the strengths of the Bangladesh apparel business and explained how the adoption of technology could assist in product innovation, value addition and overall industry skill development. They also stressed that costs in Bangladesh were rising and so adoption of technology could help optimize each & every input at various stages of production.

Dr Sayem revealed that the country’s textile universities were researching on sustainable product development and reducing production costs through virtual simulation (3D). He stressed that in these competitive times, mutual cooperation between universities & industries is the demand of time.

The last presentation of the evening was from Mr Viren Mehta – Marketing Head at fibre2fashion, who explained the various services offered by the portal which could prove helpful to the Bangladeshi textile and apparel industry to increase its business in global markets. 

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India