Sparrow Apparels, part of US $ 125 million Sparrow Group (also owners of Crown Wears), is considered to be one of the pioneers among the garment manufacturers in Bangladesh, catering in equal parts to both American (GAP, Ann Taylor, Levis, etc.) and European (M&S, Talbots, Mango and Zara) clienteles. Started in 1984, with only 200 workers, by Professor Mazharul Islam, the group is now headed by Mazharul’s son Shovon Islam (Shawn), who is the current Managing Director of the group. Mazharul is instrumental in taking the group to new heights using the JV model of business as a driver for growth.
It was Shovon’s chance meeting with Vijay Mahtaney, Managing Director of Ambattur Clothing Limited (ACL) from India at the Levis’ sourcing meet that paved way for a joint-venture between the two entities.
The success of a JV hinges primarily on coming together of diverse experiences and strengths of every member of the JV, and Sparrow Apparels is reaping all the benefits associated with it like increased capacities, risks and cost sharing with the partner, access to markets and distribution networks, greater resources, including technology and finance, besides being able to join forces in purchasing, research and development.
What perhaps benefited Sparrow Apparels the most is Ambattur Clothing’s long and proven track record and expertise in garment manufacturing and exports which it brought to the table through this jointventure, whereas Sparrow Apparels brought in the much-needed knowledge of man-management and local laws.
ACL had its modest beginning in 1981 with just one production unit, but over the years it has evolved into US $ 200 million conglomerate manufacturing apparel for some of the world’s leading brands like GAP, Diesel, Banana Republic, Kohl’s, Eddie Bauer, Canary Blue, Levis, etc. The company, which has been in garment exports for over 30 years, once had 14 manufacturing facilities in the industrial area of Ambattur (in Chennai, India) alone, employing 13,000 people. Today ACL has established manufacturing bases in Bahrain, Jordan and Bangladesh apart from its various other business interests.
Common buyer behind JV!
Had it not been for Levis – a common buyer for both Sparrow Apparels and Ambattur Clothing, which has been instrumental in bringing together the two companies – the joint-venture would not have taken place. Thanks to the JV, Sparrow Apparels and Crown Wears today are not only run by personnel from Ambattur but it has also resulted in the merger of marketing and business generation efforts of Sparrow Apparels (which has 2,300 sewing machines, producing 700,000 bottoms, 500,000 shirts and 200,000 ladies tops per month) with that of Ambattur.
“Of Ambattur Group’s total annual turnover, Sparrow Group’s contribution is US $ 125 million while the remaining amount is generated from factories in India, Bahrain and Jordan… By 2020, the group aims to double its turnover, in which Sparrow intends to contribute significantly by increasing its share to US $ 250 million,” maintains Shovon, a software engineer with an MBA degree, who spent a considerable period of time in HP and Microsoft before stepping into his father’s shoes as an entrepreneur after his demise and took over the reins of the group in 2005. Shovon, however, is confident of reaching the target as expansions are on in full-swing to enhance infrastructural capabilities to meet the increased order volumes, which got a major boost after being selected by Mango as its development partner, both for gents and ladies bottoms. “As a development partner, we study the bestselling styles of Mango, the demography and the customer profiles, based on which we recommend styles that have better prospects for the season,” observes Shovon, underlining that Mango’s job is thus cut short to just selecting the ones which it likes from the recommended range adding, “Once the style is selected, Mango advises us on washes and fabrics to be used and places the initial orders for which the price offered is also premium.” If the style sells as per projections, bulk order is just a matter of time, which is subsequently followed by replenishment orders, continuing till the company has no more capacity to offer. The business opportunity that such a proposition offers led Shovon to pursue scopes with some other renowned names like Ann Taylor and Banana Republic, who attributes the development partnership feat to the joint-venture with Ambattur.
Product Development leads to sustainable business
Heading the product development initiatives backed by his New Yorkand Barcelona-based teams, Vijay’s son, Amit Mahtaney, is always on the lookout for the latest trends globally. Beside development partnership, the JV also allowed Sparrow gain access to Ambattur’s supply chain network. Even though product development and sampling operations of the company are centralised in Chennai (India), from where orders are routed to factories in Bahrain, Jordan and Bangladesh, Sparrow Apparels has its own sampling room with 55 sewing machines, run by a group of highlyskilled operators who are capable of making a complete garment along with the patterns, while the semi-skilled operators, who are also employed by the company, are specializing in one particular set of operation unlike the skilled ones.
Exercising Washing & Finishing controls reduce rejections
“Our 15 highly-skilled operators produce the initial approval samples, while the semi-skilled ones produce finalized samples in bulk in an assembly line format,” explains Keerthiraj Kotilingam, COO, Sparrow Apparels, who has put in eight long years managing the unit, before which he was with ACL for 28 years, emphasizing that the uniqueness of the company’s manufacturing systems can be traced to the kind of products it manufactures, 80% of which are made of fabrics with at least 3% Lycra content in it, owing to which the company does shrinkage test of every lot by taking a quarter yard of fabric from the lot and marking eight dense lines on the same at a distance of 35 cms from one another using a buyer-approved template, subsequent to which fabric swatch is over-locked at the edges and subjected to whole range of washing and finishing procedures as per the buyers’ demands and requirements. The fabric swatch is then placed under the template and any shift in lines’ positions is recorded to calculate shrinkage percentage across entire length and width of the swatch.
“We do this exercise for every fabric roll and in case the shrinkage levels vary from roll to roll, the shrinkage percentage for every roll is calculated and communicated to the CAD department, who in turn incorporates the same in the dimensions of the pattern and accordingly passes on the information to the cutting department as per the fabric lot number and corresponding marker number, which are matched by the concerned department before cutting the fabric. Hence even after washing, we get the same measurement for apparels made of fabrics with different shrinkage percentages,” elaborates Keerthiraj.
The company also desists from using automatic cutters and spreaders (which otherwise it uses for nonstretch cotton fabrics) while handling fabrics with Lycra content due to certain technical reasons. “When fabric with Lycra content is laid on an automatic cutter which has strong suction bed, the fabric layer is compressed to 4.5 inches before being cut. In case of stretchable fabrics, when they are cut in a compressed form, the fabric expands after the suction has been turned off, thereby upsetting all measurements,” reasons Keerthiraj. As such, the company allows the fabrics to relax for 48 hours on an average, which depending on the amount of Lycra, can at times go up to even 72 hours, also ensuring that the measurements are intact even after cutting. Subsequent to cutting, 100% cut panel checking is done, which the company claims has reduced end-line rejection rate in the sewing lines. Also keeping in mind the country’s notoriety as far as political stability and strikes are concerned while also maintaining the dynamic nature of the supply chain, Sparrow Apparels keeps 300,000 yards of fabric in its inventory at any given point of time, sufficient to feed its sewing lines for six days, which however are not segregated as part of preparation and final assembly lines. Surprisingly, the fusing machines are also made part of the sewing lines and kept in the front of the lines, from where the cut parts are fused and fed to the sewing operators.
“Like other factories, we also had a separate fusing department but faced a lot of coordination and quality issues. That is when we decided to merge the fusing with the sewing lines and entrusted the responsibility of sewing to the line supervisors,” explains Keerthiraj, whose next focus area is to reduce the number of helpers in the sewing lines for which the company has ordered an overhead material hanger system.
Continuous process improvement for an efficient & productive factory
“It’s all about continuous improvement… Right now we have a WIP of around 1,300 bottoms in our sewing lines which we want to reduce to just 500 bottoms, and similarly remove the 22 helpers whom we have in our sewing lines presently, to increase efficiency levels from 55% to 65% in the coming years,” asserts Keerthiraj, and adding, “I have to continuously monitor the cost of manufacturing per line each day, which is calculated on the basis of the salaries of the operators, helpers and supervisors that keeps increasing on an yearly basis. Based on this I have to make at least 2% to 2.5% profit per line, which is only possible by being efficient.”
Even though, majority of the sewing lines are dedicated to bottoms, Sparrow has specially developed four sewing lines, dubbed the flexible lines, capable of doing all sorts of outwear jackets and shirts along with bottoms. “The credit for running such versatile sewing lines go to the operators, 70 per cent of whom are working with us for more than 15 years and have the flexibility, dynamism and expertise to handle these flexible sewing lines,” observes Keerthiraj, hinting towards the enviable retaining power of Sparrow. “We have a total of 11,000 workers and our attrition rate is just 2%. As such, on an average our productivity is 1.5 times more than our Indian counterpart and in some cases even 2.5 times more productive than them,” pitches in Shovon, who has introduced a barcode-based system to ensure ‘error-free packaging’. Under this system, every package is loaded with a barcode ticket which contains information pertaining to the content of the package and every product has a barcode ticket that is linked with the barcode of the package. Hence, while scanning and putting a garment in package, if the details do not match, the alarm goes of indicating the operator to put in the correct piece.
Paying back in the same coin
Putting his software development skills to use, Shovon has developed a software system for the entire Ambattur Group. As part of this, the planning division of the company does not just give the theoretical numbers to which the production people have to comply, rather the production team gives the projections, based on which production targets are reviewed as per the estimated, proposed and actual figures during the weekly meetings.