All across the world, in terms of revenue, trade, investment and employment generation, Fashion apparel industry is one of the most important sector of the economy. This industry has fabulous product variety, short product life cycle, long and inflexible supply process and unpredictable and volatile demand. In last 20 years, some of the main contributors are wholesale trade, increase in use of e-commerce in retails and significant consolidation in retail. The supply chain of apparel industry can be widely classified as :

Raw material – Textile plants – Apparel plants – Export chain – Retail store – Customer


The major segments which cover entire apparel industry comprise kid’s clothing, men clothing, men wedding wear, women clothing, bridal wear and intimate apparel. 3 main channels are there, through which apparel is sold, internet, brick & mortar and catalog. The market share of these channels are :


Category

Sales $ Billion

Market Share (%)

Brick and Mortar

169.256

92.9

Catalog

7.177

3.9

Online/ Internet

5,873

3.2

Total

182.306

100.00

Major manufacturing nations


The largest manufacturers and exporters of apparel are India, China, Hong Kong, Phillipines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Srilanka, Pakistan and Thailand. Some other nations were USA, Italy, Germany and Mexico.