During the former Soviet Union, Ukraine developed as one of the largest centres of textile industry, representing approximately 50% of the entire SU's textile industry. And even after the SU fell to pieces, the Ukraine for quite some time remained with its manufacturing power. So, what is the status quo today?
Already early last year the Swedish Fast Fashion retailer H&M announced the placement of test orders for garments from Ethiopian and Kenyan suppliers. And they're not even the first ones: Retailers such as Tesco and Walmart seem to have gone down that lane already some time ago.
On November 12 and 13, 2013 the yearly Textile Exchange conference took place in Istanbul, Turkey. I was invited to run a workshop on Scenario Work as one of the 'Strategy' break out session on the first day. The workshop was fully booked with 25 highly interested and active participants. In 90 challenging minutes they experienced a compressed version of a Scenario Planning workshop.
Supply chain transparency is – as it happens – among the prime concerns of investors when considering their risk. The news is though, that it really isn’t any news at all. Supply chain transparency has been called for for at least a couple of decades – for reasons that are entirely aligned with profitability, customer service, competitive advantage, product quality and so on and so forth.
The developments in the British Midlands of the industrial revolution have coined the textiles industry possibly like no other. It was is this area that we find the roots to the modern textile industry, including case studies that (nearly) could be dated from our modern times. From archives and historical records the industrial revolution left behind in the area, we can gain many an insight that will trigger a simple ‘déjà-vu’ when taking note of news about textile factories from the Far East that with regularity hit our headlines.
“Innovatively combining new British and sustainable fabrics with reclaimed textiles” – this is Goodone’s raison d’etre in their own words. Their most recent initiative: A proper upcycling factory that can cope with both, pre- and post-consumer waste, and is the first ‘streamlined’ upcycling facility equipped and ready to work with designers on something more than one-offs.