Sourcing socks

By: Leonie Barrie - 30 March 2006 13:00

Did you know that around £8bn worth of apparel made in China goes to waste as a direct result of basic misunderstanding of the textile terms? I certainly hadn’t realised communication was such an issue until I spoke with Phil Nash, who has set up a legwear and seamless garment sourcing company based in China.

Other scare stories from Phil include a plastics company whose JV was obliged to employ twice the number of staff it wanted and found its product was being replicated at half the price at a “very similar factory” operated by the JV partner using local raw materials; and a major shoe company that found the costs of employing people in Beijing prohibitive due to the Foreign Enterprise Service Corporation rules applied to hiring people. Another fascinating snippet focuses on hidden costs: Wal-Mart has 560 people based in China just to negotiate with and monitor suppliers.

Needless to say Phil’s company, JHL China, helps retailers avoid these pitfalls and has several new retail contracts in the pipeline – which shows how much a service like this is needed.