Japan-based Fast Retailing-owned fashion brand Uniqlo has made its global supplier list public recently which includes 146 suppliers from 7 countries that supply clothing to Uniqlo clothing chain. Surprisingly, despite being suppliers to Uniqlo none of the Indian garment manufacturing units was mentioned in the list.
On the other side, the retailer’s Sustainability Report of Fiscal Year 2016 claims 90 per cent of Uniqlo production takes place in the countries where they have production offices including China, Vietnam, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Turkey and India. Thus, it’s quite strange that as per the released list, Uniqlo is not working with even one manufacturing unit in India. It’s worth recalling that Fast Retailing Group Chairman Tadashi Yanai met Prime Minister Narendra Modi back in June 2014, expressing his intention to source garments from India.
Also Read – Fast Retailing reveals its ‘supplier list’
A Senior Executive of Orient Craft (OC), leading Indian apparel exporter, told Apparel Resources: the company has been working with Uniqlo for past one year and even supplied almost 1.5 million pieces. The association is on, the source underlined. However, OC’s executive mentioned that the fashion brand has given six-month time-line to the exporter to improve its manufacturing system and this may be a reason that Fast Retailing has not mentioned OC’s name in its list.
