With the increase in the world’s population, the demand for apparels continue to grow. To continue to maintain supply for demand, and to stay successful in the line it is important to identify the challenges and adopt a more strategic approach towards industry challenges.

One of the keys to success it to have a set of special skilled manpower to support in design, production, and distribution. For example, in order to succeed in production and sales of maternity clothing, it is important to produce breastfeeding friendly clothes for new mothers. These subcategories will fall under specialized garments and it is important to have designers with accurate skills to cater to the requirement and changes when necessary. Just as other industries, apparel industry has also adopted technology and has automated most of its procedures. This has helped most factories to cut down on the labor cost although certain procedure still needs labor support.

With the increased level of education levels, over the last decade it is observed a growth in labor turn over. This has increased the competitive pressure in many industries. Most developed countries such as United States of America has outsourced their production to low labor cost Asian countries. Countries such as Bangladesh, India, China, Vietnam, and Sri Lanka are contributing to majority of world’s apparel production. In these countries though the production rate is high, they are bound by environmental and legal regulations. These regulations are in place to ensure the health and safety of the labors whiles on-premises and outside factories.

In textile and garment factories there are mainly four types of utilities which are commonly used. They are electricity, water, steam, and compressed air. Most factories use a minimum of two generators to generate energy which are mainly run on diesel. But if the use of diesel generator is greater, electricity production will increase by two to three times. In some countries such as Bangladesh, it has very limited sources of natural gas. Therefore, it is vitally important to identify the most suitable source of energy for production processes in the apparel industry.

When outsourcing productions to Asian countries, you need to know all the external implications that would have an impact on the productions. Unavoidable natural disasters such as tsunamis or floods as well as pandemics could be a serious drawback in ensuring an efficient production line. Apart from that political instability as well as import and export laws and regulations will also have a significant impact on the final pricing of products. Apparel and textile industry produce a huge amount of waste, especially chemical is used for dyeing, printing, and washing of materials. If not properly disposed, this may increase the environmental pollution causing many health issues for its citizens. The government, legal authorities and environmentalists may be very watchful of such situations. Therefore, it is important to have proper disposal procedure for waste. These are some of the common challenges which are faced in the apparel industry in the world. However, despite all the challenges apparel industry still continues to grow stronger and create many job opportunities around the world.