UK’s leading corporate clothing supplier, Dimensions, which dispatches over 14 million garments throughout the UK, Europe and rest of the world, clothes over 3 million people every year. The company claims to be the largest in corporate wear and has a client base which includes many of the world’s best known companies in the public and private sector in retail, finance, travel and leisure, NHS (National Health Services), police and ambulance service, hotels, logistics and more.
Team Apparel Online recently met Padam Vaish, Country Manager, Bangladesh at his office in Dhaka for an insight into the business of corporate wear sourcing.
Though, the Dhaka sourcing office of Dimensions was opened only last year in January, the company has been sourcing workwear from Bangladesh for almost a decade. “Last year we sourced about 1.2 million garments and this year we’ll be buying more than 3 million garments,” shares Padam who has a rich work experience with leading Indian garment manufacturing companies and buying offices in India.
Dimensions does not only take care of the garment part of workwear, but also provides a full workwear solution from mining hats, steel toe shoes, fire retardant gloves, in fact almost everything and anything to do with uniforms. The company has its warehouse in the UK where it stocks garments for its clients. Normally, the contract period with each of its clients ranges between 4-6 years. “As we provide service we commit delivery at client’s doorstep in 48 hours, we have to stock a huge amount of inventory, for which a long-term association is a must to make it workable. Right now we have about 9 million garments stocked in UK for our various clients,” informs Padam.
Increasing dependency on Bangladesh market forces them to open office in January 2011 in Dhaka
Total sourcing in FY 2011-12 worth US $ 10 million; increasing it to US $ 30 million by year 2013
Majority of the uniforms that are sourced require high performance fabrics, for which Dimensions-Bangladesh is importing fabrics from China, Thailand and UK. Colour fastness and anti pilling properties are the two main features which have to be present in the fabric of all uniforms manufactured. Fire retardant, water proof, anti stain properties are given as per the uniform profile; like for example a chef’s jacket has to be stain proof; higher the performance, higher is the price.
Workwear or uniform business is all about consistency, every lot; every batch has to match in terms of styling, colour and the logos. “Logos and colour continuity are the two major aspects apart from performance which have to be administered. For colour consistency we are working on delta E readings below 1 and even 0.8 for some customers to make sure that the colour continuity remains within the acceptable band,” avers Padam.
All the fabrics and accessories used in Dimensions’ workwear are coming from nominated suppliers. “We are not going for cheap products; each and everything we procure is from pre-identified source. Even for knitted products we provide names of the suppliers from where garmenting units have to take the yarns; we test the yarns at our end and before the yarn is supplied for use, we have to make sure that the yarn supplied to the factory is right to achieve the desired performance level for which we give precise specifications to a yarn supplier to ensure that fibre contents are correct,” shares Padam, who is working with many factories in Bangladesh.
“Logos and colour continuity are the two major aspects apart from performance which have to be administered. For colour consistency, we are working on delta E readings below 1 and even 0.8 for some customers to make sure that the colour continuity remains within the acceptable band.”
“Dimension’s UK office is sending about 1,40,000 parcels a day to our customers. We have our own calling centres which book uniform orders and send the mail to supervisors who organize to deliver the same within 48 hours.”
The buying office is placing orders for uniforms in various sizes, from extra small to 8 XL which is about standard size 16-17. “We are doing special measures; one person can be 6 feet tall, but very thin and the other can be only 4 feet tall, but heavy built like 8 XL, so we need to custom tailor for all our clients.” says Padam.
The orders are placed every month as this is repeat business; in fact, Dimensions gives capacity forecast to its vendors. “We tell them this is the capacity we need every month and based on that we keep filling them with orders,” says Padam.
According to Padam, workwear is normally made according to weather conditions and typically it’s winter, summer or rains. “Generally an employee gets uniform sets for 18 months which comprises 4-5 shirts, 2 trousers, 2 jackets, a pullover, a hat and shoes. Our UK office is sending about 1,40,000 parcels a day to our customers. We have our own calling centres which book uniform orders and send the mail to supervisors who organize to deliver the same within 48 hours,” shares Padam. He also informs that besides Bangladesh, Dimensions is sourcing workwear from China, Vietnam and Cambodia.
For Dimensions, Bangladesh is one of the most promising sourcing destinations of the future as China is getting very expensive and the company is strategically shifting orders to Bangladesh. “We are already doing one third of total sourcing out of Bangladesh, and by next year we will be doing about 50 per cent of Dimensions’ sourcing from the country. The Dhaka office keeps doing trials on different product categories, which as of now are being done in other destinations,” shares Padam, as per whom the target for the next year is to source US $ 40 million worth of products from the Dhaka office which means doubling the current sourcing.
