HARD AT WORK: A worker at a garment factory in Beximco Industrial Park. Photo by Anand Holla

The story behind Bangladesh’s largest corporate conglomerate’s thumping success is one that worships innovation and speed, writes Anand Holla

Much before Zara outwitted hip high-street brands to emerge as the world’s largest fashion retailer, it had been hashing out and fine-tuning its innovative business model with a few trusted manufacturers around the world. Beximco was one of them.

Spain’s Inditex, parent company of fast-fashion chain Zara, has revolutionised fashion consumption around the world by tapping into the latest styles and zipping their cheapest versions into stores.

Just as driven by speed and quick-thinking, Beximco, Bangladesh’s largest corporate entity and private sector group, has been involved in Zara’s ascent to the top.

As part of the Visit Bangladesh Programme organised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh, we dropped by at the multi-faceted Beximco Industrial Park at Gazipur that stretches across a sprawling 350 acres. Lush with more than 100,000 trees and even a wildlife sanctuary featuring deer and peacocks, the property houses advanced, cost-effective manufacturing plants with a special focus on running a green system.

In a conference room dotted with photos of him and his management with big guns including Zara’s top bosses, Syed Naved Husain, Group Director and Chief Executive Officer of Beximco Limited, runs us through the process that lets customers decide production.

“We are market-driven, not product-driven. That is why we decided to focus on innovation and speed, instead of chasing cheap labour,” Husain says, with the conviction of a seasoned businessman.

“Our relationship with Zara began in 1998. They have changed the retail market dynamics forever, and we are happy to be part of that by focussing on flexible manufacturing methods.”

For the uninitiated, Zara’s process starts by picking design ideas from all over and tweaking them based on the global network of shopper-feedback from their stores. Once the respective headquarters make sense of the comments, they forward the changes to the manufacturers who incorporate the alterations and ship the goods out.

Since stocks change every two weeks or so, the customer is compelled to make a now-or-never choice each time he or she visits any of the more than 6300 stores in 87 countries of Zara and other Inditex brands, which together generate nearly 21 billion US dollars in annual sales.

“Ours has become one big supply chain. We work with one design chain so we have fast access to the end consumer. Sometimes, our customers give colours to us just 14 days before. But we still do it and ship it,” says Husain.

And when it comes to dealing with Zara’s need for speed, even airplanes full of smartly cut clothes are dispatched every now and then.

Beximco, which is short for Bangladesh Export Import Company Limited, happens to be South Asia’s largest and best-known vertical textile operation, boasting a workforce of more than 55,000 people and a group turnover of about a billion US dollars.

As you wander through the altars of high-street fashion in Doha and come across Made in Bangladesh labels on the insides of fancy outfits, chances are that they are made at the Beximco factory, which apart from Zara, makes garments for brands like Calvin Klein, DKNY, H&M, Van Heusen, MotherCare, Macys and JC Penney.

However, the textiles and garments plants that handle everything from spinning, weaving, washing, knitting, sewing to printing, is just one of the many industries that Beximco is dabbling successfully in.

Their operations and investments are spreads across trading, pharmaceuticals, ceramics, marine food, real estate development, hospitality, construction, information and communication technologies, media, aviation, financial services and energy.0

 


 

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