Leading international textile trade fairs affected by Covid-19 ourbreaks report big drop in visitor numbers

The global fashion industry was faced with challenging times even prior to the coronavirus outbreak as “winds of change” are reportedly sweeping across many markets, seeing slower growth and declining consumer confidence, while retailers and brands are under pressure to embrace digital and addressing sustainability.

Premiere Vision Paris - February 2020

With the continual escalation of the outbreak, the multi-billion-dollar industry worldwide is compounded by supply chain issues and weak demand, as many businesses and companies in a wide range of industries currently are dependent on China as both a manufacturing base and for its billion-plus-consumer market.  

Premiere Vision Paris - February 2020

While more and more international trade events for luxury items, fashion and textile industries have now announced their cancellation for this year, those that managed to stage just before the Covid-19 outbreak took hold in Italy have reported big drop in visitor and participation numbers in their February 2020 events.

Leading international trade fairs held in Paris, namely Premiere Vision and Texworld and their co-events, have seen substantial drop in attendance figures.

In the previous week, PV Paris which covers a wide array of textile, fabrics, design, yarns, leather, accessories and garment production, reported that it was visited by 44 414 international buyers and professionals to their February 2020 edition, a drop of more than 20% compared to the February 2019 show, due to travel bans from many countries and areas greatly affected by the Coronavirus, explained the organisers.

Now Messe Frankfurt France has revealed a dramatic drop of 49% in footfall for their group of six major trade fairs covering fabrics and materials, garment production, textile innovation, clothing and accessories, registering 7109 visitors compared with the previous year.  

Texworld - February 2020, Paris

Michael Scherpe, President of Messe Frankfurt France, remarked in a statement that the exceptional circumstances prevented almost 50% of Chinese exhibitors from leaving their country to come to Paris. In some cases, the European agents of these Chinese companies were able to present the Chinese’s collections on the stands.  


The results in terms of the number of discussions and amount of business reported by participants showed that the organisers got things right in staying the course and in continuing with all the events once they had consulted with the French health authorities, said the organisers, and that despite it all, their main Chinese partners have signalled their readiness to renew their confidence in the fair by confirming that they will certainly be back in September.

Texworld - February 2020, Paris

“As always, the players in this dynamic market will demonstrate their resilience and professionalism. Even if buyers decide to put alternative sourcing routes in place on a temporary basis in order to guarantee supplies, they will want to resume their usual routes quickly. For this reason, one can already imagine that the September session will be very good for business" said Mr. Scherpe.
Both fairs were particularly affected by their Chinese customers, as China is the epicentre of the Covid-19 virus, and its status as the key supplier of parts and textile products to the world’s industries has made it a most crucial link in the world’s economy,  But as life in some parts of the country has come to a stand-still due to the outbreak, the world’s reliance on China may now ironically make it the weakest link in the supply chain.

Reported in a recent article in Time magazine in March, Pierre Haren, CEO of fintech start-up Causality Link, believes consumers may soon start to see less variety on store shelves as companies concentrate their available production on products they already know to be best-sellers, and predicts there could be supply shortages as early as mid-March.

Premiere Vision Paris - Feburary 2020

Like many other industries, the fashion world has long embraced China as a source of cheap manufacturing — the country is by far the world’s largest producer of textiles, and it produces many of the other elements that go into clothes, from buttons to zippers to thread. “The vast majority of certain products are only done in China,” says Gary A. Wassner, the CEO of Hildun Corporation and the chairman of Interluxe. “We became very dependent, and we allowed it to happen because it was cost-efficient, but that’s not the only thing to consider.”

The fashion industry and other sectors are also facing big challenges from the other end of the production chain: consumer demand. Pauline Brown, the former chairman of North America at LVMH, says the luxury market is already starting to see a “fairly severe” effect due to the virus, especially as Chinese shoppers stop traveling to make big-ticket purchases in cities like New York and Paris. Brown says that, as consumers become focused on their health, they’re less likely to shop for luxury goods, as reported in Time.

Jordanian garment factory employs Syrian refugees for exports

Life as we know it today is filled with modern technology to help us cope with our daily functions and enhance our well-being.  But at the same time, in many parts of the world today, the basic needs of life are threatened by war, poverty and hunger. 

Oryana Awaisheh, executive manager of Jerash Garments
and Fashion Manufacturing of Jordan, shows off sportswear
made with the help of Syrian refugees.
Photo © Lucia Carpio 2018

While visiting textile and garment industry trade fairs recently I found an abundance of the latest wearable technology and was also pleased to find garment companies that are offering hope to those in despair.

One such company is the Jerash Garments & Fashions Manufacturing Company, a factory in Jordan which has 2,800 employees and is one of the pioneering companies that has been part of an aid programme to train refugees from Syria to manufacture garments in its facilities.

The international aid programme offers Jordan concessional loans and preferential trade terms in return for opening its labour market to some of the estimated 1.3 million refugees who fled there during the war in Syria.

I met Ms Oryana Awaisheh, executive manager of Jerash in Paris at the Texworld group of trade events, notably Apparel Sourcing, which along with Avantex, Shawls&Scarves, Texworld and Texworld Denim Paris was held at Le Bourget in north Paris, 11 – 14 February where 18 different countries had converged to showcase their latest on offer to the garment and textile industry.  Michael Scherpe, Président of fair organiser Messe Frankfurt France, likened the congregation of different nations to the Winter Olympics held concurrently in Pyeongcheng, Korea.

Jordan was one of the countries that participated in the Texworld / Apparel Sourcing
fair in Le Bourget, Paris, February 11 - 14, 2018/
Photo © Lucia Carpio 2018 

Ms Awaisheh of Jerash in Jordan explained that the aid programme to help Syrian refugees had been trying in the beginning because few Syrians wanted to work in factories where the pay was not as high as other industries.

Finally in June last year, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) brought in new rules and the factory could qualify to export to the EU tariff-free by meeting the Syrian worker quota on a single production line, rather than the whole factory.  

Encouraged, Awaisheh visited refugee camps to meet women (as the garment sector hires a largely female workforce) and also attended job fairs, and invited refugees to tour the factory.  She then set up a daycare centre and arranged transport to facilitate the refugees' participation.  Eventually after a few months, Awaisheh was able to recruit 85 female workers to work in the factory and thus qualify for export to Europe.

Established 18 years ago, the vertically set-up Jerash’s main export market is the US, at 1.8 Billion USD in 2017, and it also has Free Trade Agreement with Canada, the EU (including Norway, and Switzerland), Singapore, Turkey and countries in the gulf region.

The company is accredited and compliance approved to make for established sportswear brands, including North Face, Columbia, Land’s End, North Face, Nautica, Timberland as well as for Philip-Van Heusen which owns Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, IZOD and Speedo.  Its workforce include workers from Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal in addition to Syria.

The participation of Jordanian companies at the February 2018 edition of Apparel Sourcing, was supported by Mr Hassan Nsour, who is responsible for Qualifying Industrial Zones at the Ministry for Industry and Trade, in association with the World Bank integrated-programme for Syrian refugees. Mr Adel Tawileh, board member at the Jordanian Chamber of Commerce, said they met their main goal of the fair, meeting fashion labels and also independent designers, who were mainly from Europe.   He said, “Our firms were especially surprised by the success of the uniform & workwear segment, men’s suits and women’s clothing with Middle Eastern embroidery.”

Paris textile trade fairs recorded 81% of visitors came from abroad, say organisers

The very established Messe Frankfurt France which organised the group of  complementing textile and fashion trade fairs: APPAREL SOURCING PARIS – AVANTEX PARIS – SHAWLS & SCARVES PARIS the accessories showcase – TEXWORLD PARIS – TEXWORLD DENIM PARIS -  which took place at Le Bourget, Paris, from 11 to 14 February 2018, reportedly welcomed 13,606 international visitors, acknowledging that opening the shows on a Sunday had been a success.

 “This February 2018 show with our initiative for a Sunday opening was a trial run for us. The gamble of opening the trade fair on a Sunday (had) paid off with an attendance of 18% of total visitors, who were able conduct their business in a calmer atmosphere,” said Michael Scherpe, President of Messe Frankfurt France, adding that the second day of the fairs, which fell on a Monday proved to be their busiest day of this edition.  However he confirmed that come September 2018, the shows will revert to their previous timetable to open on a Monday, 17th September running until 20th September 2018.

Mr Scherpe revealed that this February, the shows’ attendance remain international: the top five countries were respectively France, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Spain, and Italy.  New visitors were recorded from North America (+7%) and the African continent (+26%), led by the countries who are major suppliers for Europe such as Morocco (+25%) and Turkey (+15%), who came to Le Bourget to carry out sourcing.

The shows welcomed also visitors from emerging markets such as South Africa as well as Ethiopia, which was the country of honour this season.

“The Southern Hemisphere has proved to be very promising, since Australasia recorded a healthy increase of 55%. Nonetheless, we have noted a drop of 6% in attendance from Asian countries, obviously due to Chinese New Year, an all-important family celebration.  Anticipating that many Chinese exhibitors would be bringing their families, the shows also set up a day care centre to accommodate accompanying children.

“On the other hand, Turkey is very active with a 20% increase.  Returning to Europe, here visitor numbers from Eastern European countries have kept growing compared with February 2017, especially from Russia (+38%), Poland (+15%) and Hungary (+8%), and we see favourable results for the Ukraine, Cyprus, Finland and Bulgaria.

"These steady and sustainable visitor numbers go to demonstrate how very attractive Messe Frankfurt France’s Paris shows are and their strength as a business platform,” said Mr. Scherpe.

All Photos © Lucia Carpio 2018

Major apparel suppliers experiencing a decline in fashion exports to the US

In less than two weeks, Donald Trump will be sworn in as America's  45th president, and much focus will be placed on his foreign trade policies, as whether, upon assuming duty in the White House, he will practise what he has been preaching throughout his campaign.  And that is to carry out a series of protectionist measures, aimed at promoting the economy and employment in industries in the United States.  His course of actions to "Make America Great Again" will no doubt have various foreseeable consequences for a whole range of industries, including the textile and clothing sector.

According to figures provided by textile fairs organisers Messe Frankfurt France (organisers of Texworld Paris and related trade fairs), major apparel suppliers of textiles and clothing have already been experiencing a decline in fashion exports to the US market.

Texworld Paris is one of the key textile trade fairs in Europe that welcome internatonal visitors,
from all over Europe, US and Asia.

For the first nine months of 2016, US textiles and clothing imports fell by 6.3% slumping down to USD 80 billion. The decline amounted to 5.0% for clothing (USD 61.6 billion) and 10.2% for textiles (USD 18.4 billion).

China remains by far the largest supplier of clothing to the USA, but its share fell from 35.9% to 34.5%. Other Asian suppliers are stagnating or have recorded a poor performance (Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka); Cambodia is experiencing a sharp shrinking.

Overall, ASEAN countries have seen their exports to the US drop by 3.4% for the first nine months of 2016, down to USD 15.3 billion.

Over the same period, suppliers who are members of the NAFTA free trade agreement with the US (Mexico and Canada) have suffered a decline of 6.8%, down to USD 2.9 billion, while other US clothing exporters to the USA experienced contrasting situations: Honduras (-4.1%), El Salvador (+0.6%), and so on.

Texworld Paris will play host to international exhibitors February 6th to 9th 2017
 to be held at the Paris-Le Bourget exhibition centre.

European clothing suppliers are marginalized on the US market. 

For the first nine months of 2016, EU's exports (from 28 member states) fell to USD 1.57 billion, a decline of 4.6% compared to the first 9 months of 2015.

Italy, the largest among them, saw its exports fall by 6% to USD 869 million.  Other major European suppliers for the first nine months of 2016 were Portugal (USD 149 million or +12%), France (USD 109 million, - 9%) and Great Britain (USD 83 million USD, -16%).

Exports of textiles (fabrics, yarn, etc.) from the EU to the USA reached, for the first nine months, USD 1.47 billion, USD 396 million of which were for Italy (-10%), USD 254 million for Germany (+ 1%) and USD 101 million for France (-15%).

Thanks to its QIZ free trade agreement with the United States, Jordan ranked 12th among US apparel suppliers (USD 975 million for the first nine months of 2016, + 2% ). Other major Mediterranean suppliers during this period were Egypt (USD 542 million, -17%), Turkey (USD 360 million, + 6%), Morocco (USD 98 million, + 8%) and Tunisia (USD 46 million, -16%).

Turkey is also a major supplier of textiles (USD 799 million in 2015 and USD 625 million for the first nine months of 2016) and, to a lesser extent, Egypt (USD 181 million in 2015 and USD 131 million for the first 9 months of 2016).

It should also be noted that sub-Saharan African countries saw their exports increase by 2% to USD 764 million in the first 9 months of 2016. The most important of these are Kenya, Lesotho and Mauritius.