COVID-19 seems to have a long-term impact on the Indian apparel industry, and nobody better than Ludhiana-based winterwear manufacturers understand this.
The winterwear manufacturers from the city will feel the heat as the upcoming winter season is expected to remain slow. Notably, their business will have a negative impact of 40 to 45 per cent.
Even last winter season for Ludhiana’s apparel industry was not very good, and so SMEs are in big trouble.
In particular, the SME manufacturers, who used to supply jackets, blazers, cardigans, sweaters, shawls, etc. for wholesalers and retailers, are not getting any enthusiastic response and therefore are not very keen to have huge production as they used to earlier.
“So far, there is not much clarity about the orders for the upcoming season, and so we are planning to produce only 40 per cent of what we produced last year. Fund crunch is also forcing us to keep the production low,” told Ganesh Gupta, Director, Urmishya Impex, Ludhiana. Similar is the opinion of many other SME garment manufacturers.
For the majority of winterwear manufacturers, business depends season to season, and Ludhiana is a major hub in India for knitted winterwear. Irrespective of the orders they are getting or will be getting, the margin is also going to be low compared to previous years. At the same time due to labour shortage, these manufacturers are also facing difficulties in production. Therefore, overall their business sentiments are quite down.
Normally by July end, manufacturers start delivering winterwear, but this time it is going to be delayed by at least a month.
