LONDON – Authorities in both the United Kingdom and Germany have established a fund that will provide subsidies to companies in Ethiopia’s textile and garment manufacturing industry.An initial £5 million has been invested in the initiative at its launch-stage, and will be apportioned to applicants which demonstrate both that they’ve endured an economic shock amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, and that they have a robust recovery plan as to ensure the money isn’t dispersed in vain.Despite Ethiopia hav

As the demand for sustainably sourced raw materials rises, World Textile Sourcing (WTS) offers a sustainable product strategy that includes renewable and recycled fibers in an effort to attain circularity. This will also help achieve a closed-loop production cycle made more transparent.The company aims to make strategies and plans that aim from the supply chain and grow uptown the cultivation of fibers. WTS is known for maintaining ethical production standards throughout its manufacturing proces

SAN FRANCISCO – The Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC) will ditch the aggregated single score used by the Higg Materials Sustainability Index (MSI) in January 2021 as it shifts its focus from raw material to product level environmental impacts.Instead, MSI users will be able to use the five individual impact area scores in the newly Higg Product Module (Higg PM) to determine the environmental credentials of their products.These impact areas are global warming potential, nutrient pollution in wa

LONDON - The Fashion Revolution initiative is urging consumers to boycott Black Friday and Cyber Monday to take a stand against what it describes as the "environmental and social damage of hyper-discount culture".Urging shoppers to reflect on and campaign against overproduction, Fashion Revolution argues that the fashion industry’s impact on people and planet is out of control.Co-founder and creative director Orsola de Castro said: “Black Friday is a scam. It’s one more way to get citi

The farmers and cultivators of wool for the Chargeurs group have been ethically producing wool for many years. In 2017, the sustainability movement drove the company to make its efforts more apparent which led to the launch of branded wool fiber NATIVA™.Chargeur’s CLM department has been in business for over 60 years, along with the iconic wool fiber knowhow. NATIVA™ came to existence as a result of heritage, expertise and the demand in the industry.The brand’s deeply rooted in its identity thro

Entertainment Earth, an online retailer and wholesaler, has invested in Codesoft, barcode label creation software and print automation technology Sentinel from Teklynx.Image Courtesy: base.imgix.netThis partnership has helped the company improve its print speed and label management process for 33,000 products.The company needed a solution that would deliver increased flexibility for its custom label designs, offer customer assistance, integration with the SQL database, decrease the time required

The British Retail Consortium (BRC) – the go-to trade association for all the retailers in the UK – has said that Christmas shopping may get hit badly as England is set to go into another lockdown.Image Courtesy: ft.comBRC said this after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Saturday evening that with the rise in coronavirus cases, there will be second lockdown in England from 5 November (Thursday).And this time it is a 4-week lockdown.The association has said that the retail sector will no

Significant recovery in order intake in third quarter 2020Order intake of CHF 425.1 million after nine monthsCOVID crisis management in placeContinuous implementation of the strategyOutlook 2020The market recovery, whichRieterreported in June 2020, has continued. This is reflected in capacity utilization at spinning mills worldwide, which Rieter monitors. In April 2020, the proportion of producing spinning mills was around 40% while at the end of September 2020 this was around 90%.Against this b

As online size measurement technology has been seen one of the major innovations for couple of years, more brands and fashion retailers are putting their hands into it and providing consumers a better shopping experience – with better fit and design combination.The most recent addition to it is Itochu – one of the leading Japanese trading houses – which has come up with an online bespoke apparel brand, Inishirt, in Hong Kong recently.What’s special is its collaboration with Shenzhen Tozi Technol

STUTTGART – Organic cotton fraud in India has once again reared its head after an investigation by the Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) identified 20,000 metric tonnes of cotton that was wrongly certified as organic.The systematic fraud discovered by GOTS, included the use of bogus raw cotton transaction certificates, false QR codes and a fictitious, cloned Indian government website that authenticate the ‘organic’ cotton fibre.GOTS has since instructed its approved bodies to cancel all ups