Speaking at a roundtable on the market access and potential of brand creation for the garment sector, experts said garment exporters need to establish brands collectively or individually in order to boost garment exports from the country.
“Against all odds, we have already established Bangladesh as a reliable supplier of garment products. But we do not have any brand,” stated Chief Executive Officer of Bangladesh Foreign Trade Institute (BFTI) Ali Ahmed, while former Commerce Secretary Sohel Ahmed Chowdhury observed, “The Export Promotion Bureau can come forward and help them (garment manufacturers) launch their brands,” adding that Bangladesh has a number of exporters who can establish brands aimed at overseas markets.
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The former Commerce Secretary, while urging firms to target emerging markets such as India, Russia, China, Malaysia and South Korea to start with underlined that a number of firms can establish a brand through a collective effort by way of sharing cost and meeting challenges, as individual firms might not be able to establish a brand.
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It may be mentioned here that Bangladesh is the second largest garment exporter globally, after China and exported garments worth US $ 25 billion in the last financial year. However, Bangladesh’s share in the US $ 470 billion international garment export market is only 5.36 per cent, pointed out Vice Chairman of Export Promotion Bureau (EPB) Shubhashish Bose, who underlined that Bangladesh Knitwear Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BKMEA) and Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA) can set up outlets abroad where the local firms will sell their products.
The EPB Vice Chairman further added that garment exporters from Bangladesh cannot sell their products at high price because they do not have the goodwill. “So, we have to create our goodwill first to popularise our products,” Bose maintained.
