Different companies have different reasons to take up expansions; at Impressive Group the move came at the behest of its buyer Meijer of Canada. Till recently, the company was manufacturing only bottoms in denim, twill, canvas, corduroy, flannel, for men’s, ladies and kids, before Impressive forayed into shirt manufacturing. “We have expanded with two factories and one is for shirts. A lot of buyers are now asking for package orders, and when one of our old and reliable buyers, Meijer, insisted that we should get into shirts so that along with bottoms they can source shirts as well from us, we decided to go ahead,” shares Md. Mosharraf Hossain Dhali, Managing Director, Impressive Group.
Catering to buyers such as Kik, La-Redoute, Otto, George, Verbaudet, M&S, Walmart, Tesco, H&M, Zara, Auchan, K-Mart, Empire, Tag Industries, Billabong and Brylane, to mention a few, Canada is today the biggest market for the company, accounting for 55% of exports followed by Europe with 20% share. “I also cater to South African market with buyers like Woolworth which has more than 500 stores,” informs Dhali.
Presently, the company has 64 lines and a well-established IE department to take care of line balancing, reduce wastages and also enhance productivity. “Manufacturing garments is now actually a kind of engineering. When I started this business, it was just about cutting and sewing a garment but now with so much automation coming in, we need well-trained people to pursue production,” reasons Dhali who started his career with IBM in Chicago and never even thought that he would one day come back to Bangladesh and get into the business of garment manufacturing.
Besides garmenting, Impressive Group also has a separate entity, Good Link Enterprise, which supplies fabric. The company imports fabrics from China, India and Indonesia, and sells it in Bangladesh. “We have an office in China to help us maintain the quality of the fabrics. Our annual sales are around US $ 35 million per annum. In garmenting, the group has a turnover of US $ 50 million and with the two new factories, Dhali is targeting to touch US $ 60-70 million by next year.
