Led by Arvind Mills of Ahmedabad, the denim industry in India took off after the mid-eighties. Subsequently, a good number of textile manufacturing and marketing units like Soma Textiles, Raymond, KG Denim, Malwa Group, Aarvee Denim, Nahar Group, Chiripal Group, LNJ Denim, Century Denim and others totaling to twenty three in number made the sector a sizeable one that was recognized by international branded denim jeans players.
Denims in the form of jeans and other dresses found an impressive way to enter the wardrobes of urban and very recently the semi-urban style/fashion conscious consumers. Denims historically pass through cycles of ups and downs but eventually come out unscathed. However, the current all pervasive economic meltdown has adversely affected the export led Indian textile industry deeply and naturally the denim sector, too could not escape from its clutches.
The timing of the global changes was somewhat unfortunate as at that stage Indian textile industry was poised for an upswing, backed up by the then sensible MSP, a good cotton crop, depreciating currency and industry's willingness to invest in new technology and set up more manufacturing units. Fibre2fashion took the initiative to speak to Dr Roy, the pioneer of denim in India and former Chief Executive Officer of Arvind Mills Group, the mill that started the denim revolution in India, under his tutelage.
Dr. Roy is a PhD in Textiles from University of Manchester and has over 40 years of experience in industry, research and teaching and at present, he is working as an independent management consultant for textile industries globally. He participated in ITMA 2003 at Birmingham where he was invited for a special session on China. He was the Deputy Chairman for the first Textile Council at Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
We began the interview by asking Dr Roy to comment on the current scenario prevailing in the denim sector and share his rich experience to suggest strategic moves to help the denim industry overcome the impact of this Tsunami like crisis, to which Dr Roy explained in detail by saying, ��Yes, the present downturn has certainly taken toll of the Indian textile industry particularly, on the export front where denim is perhaps the single largest traded product and that too as 100 percent processed goods (not grey or semi-processed).
He added, ��The situation is similar for all other denim producing countries and a slowing down at the retail level, non-clearance of prevailing stocks and all combined in turn have negatively impacted the denim manufacturing sector and pushed the industry to explore on four major fronts��. Listing out the areas of concerns he said;
1) Competition from the lower end of the domestic commodity market which uses Polyester Textured filaments as weft leading to a product group not heard of in the denim business in the past and these fake denims, having blue warp but not Indigo-dyed particularly from the decentralized Poly-blend sector have been giving a run to the organized sector, although, specialty filaments like T-400 from Dupont and Invista, which offer functional advantages have been used in the value -added segment.
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 2) Domestic value added branded Denims/Jeans market where the products are primarily cotton-based and specially finished.
3) Relatively less developed countries like Bangladesh who have converted Indian denim fabrics to ready made garments and which deliver to lower strata of the international branded jeans market.
4) Relatively less developed countries like Sri Lanka which have capabilities to cater to the up-market brands and also includes exporting directly to the industrialized economies where some appreciable conversion facilities still exist.
��The strategy for each of the above would be to understand and analyse the forces that shape the nature of the relevant competition in each segment and starting with an appropriate product-market mix, costs in particular, quality and on time delivery would continue to dominate. Strategic alliances in one form or other could be another front to explore to overcome competition and the other big challenge would be to develop radically new products not seen yet in the global market like Indigo-Wool and Indigo-Silk as developed by Malwa Group�� he concluded by saying.
Next we asked him to give us a glimpse on the recent policy changes and its impact on the denim industry in India and what according to him are the areas that need improvement in terms of policy reforms and industry reforms, to which he said, ��Industry as a whole was upset with the new MSP of cotton that made it perhaps for the first time in recent decades more expensive than its international counterparts, besides which duty draw back on ready made garment export, interest subvention on packing credit, refund of state level duty , etc were bone of contentions for the industry��.
��Although , taking corrective actions on such issues, particularly the MSP of cotton would favourably influence the industry's performance, perhaps the reforms by the industry itself on leadership and strategy, understanding competition, financial management skill and acumen, alignment of sales and marketing strategy with the business strategy, human capital needs and its management and finally the interplay of all, leading to development of sustainable new products would have more telling effects��, he added by saying.
��A quick glance at the last two quarters' performance of the denim majors brings out the fact that the underperformance is primarily due to derivative losses and inadequate assessment of the local currency movement against the US dollar��, he concluded by saying.
Probing further, we asked him to speak about the scope of R&D in the denim industry, to which he said, ��R&D in any sector of the textile industry should not be seen isolated as the developments in one sector may lead to more fascinating developments in the other sector of the industry like the much talked about Liquid Ammonia Process, which was first utilized by ��Cluette- Peabody�� for its 'Sanforset' process for denim jeans, but today, the process finds application at many places excepting perhaps in denim jeans".
Dr Roy continued to say, ��Development of novel filaments in Japan in the late eighties caught the attention of fancy yarn manufacturers in the beginning of nineties and led to multiple/multi-size slub yarns, thick and thin yarns, multi-count/multi-twist yarns, which have dominated the denim fabric development business in the last decade. Jeans in recent decades have overshadowed the developments in denims through its various wet and dry finishing washing techniques��.
��But, never the less, as mentioned a series of novel yarns used in newer ways in fabrics and finally newer castes, de-sizing , mercerizing, over-dyeing and more and more use of sulphur dyes and innovative coating techniques, etc have been keeping the denim fabric development flag flying high and additionally, application of natural fibres like Flax (Linen), Hemp, Ramie, Bamboo, etc and man-made natural fibres and newer man-made fibres and filaments would play important roles in the R&D of denims and it is high time that the denim and jeans industry experience a major breakthrough��, he concluded by saying.
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