As for the future perspective, Bangladesh needs to focus on textile machinery manufacturing and maintenance. This diversification will allow the country to further excel in the value chain. And the good news is that BEXIMCO is taking the initiative to manufacture textile machinery.
Syed Naved Husain has been at the helm of one of the largest multinational conglomerates in Bangladesh with diversified business interests, including textiles – BEXIMCO Group for the last 30 years with his charismatic leadership.
As for the future perspective, Bangladesh needs to focus on textile machinery manufacturing and maintenance. This diversification will allow the country to further excel in the value chain. And the good news is that BEXIMCO is taking the initiative to manufacture textile machinery.
Syed Naved Husain has been at the helm of one of the largest multinational conglomerates in Bangladesh with diversified business interests, including textiles – BEXIMCO Group for the last 30 years with his charismatic leadership.
Husein gen 1 BBBB
Syed Naved Husain has been serving as the CEO and Group Director of BEXIMCO. He grew to fame in the world of fashion apparel retail, by successfully focusing BEXIMCO’s large-scale operations on flexible manufacturing, speed to market and innovation. This resulted in the rapid establishment of strategic partnerships with many of the world’s leading retailers.
Recently in an interview with Textile Today, Syed Naved Husain shared many aspects of his groundbreaking success.
Journey in the textile and garment industry
Syed Naved Husain: I completed my engineering and MBA from the USA. In my early career time, I use to work in disruptive technology inventions as an engineer. Then I have also worked in other industries in different parts of the world.
In my career’s third phase – I was really passionate about textiles and garments. And in the early 90s, I moved to Bangladesh when the textiles and garments industry was very basic. Still, with the country’s huge young population and duty-free access to Europe and in some apparel categories enjoying large quotas in the USA – had offered an excellent opportunity. And Bangladesh’s apparel export was around USD 4 to USD 5 billion at that time.
What was really missing was high-value-added apparel manufacturing, design, or product development capability. The country was heavily into basic readymade garments (RMG) with imported fabric – with value addition of only 25 %. We were only tailors and middlemen from South Asian countries making all the money with big margins.
Future of apparel industry
Syed Naved Husain: Back then, BEXIMCO was thinking of entering into textile and apparel. I met some of the leading brand owners and industry leaders and asked them where they see the future trend of apparel. They said a lot of the work we are doing today i.e. design and development, innovation, value addition, etc. So, the RMG manufacturers will go through a massive transformation. And over the years, Bangladesh is in the right path as a strategic partner of global brands and product development, design, value-addition and at the same time aware of the global fashion trends to deliver the products – which will happen on a collaborative basis with brands.
This way, the supply chain becomes secure as brands will not jump from one supplier to another. And at the same time, collaboration ensures that brand customers become manufacturers’ customers. Thus manufacturers and brands become a part of a supply chain partnership.
Apparel industry transformation takes place every day. And either you change yourself or you perish.
In the same way, fashion industry trends are the same – one season’s fashion becomes out of trend in the very next season. And bringing this huge volume of apparel needs speed in the supply chain. Otherwise, by the time products reach brands, it becomes obsolete. Another issue is having unsold inventory.
Bangladesh’s textile industry needed to eradicate all these challenges to get on the train of global fast fashion. And set up vertical factories to produce fabric-to-fashion – which ultimately reduces lead time.
And as a pioneer, BEXIMCO jumped into the opportunity too. We set up our first vertical textile, then denim and later washing plant back in the mid-90s. Additionally, we set up our first design studio in 1996 – at a time when most of the local apparel factories were shipping basic RMG with 25% value addition. While at BEXIMCO – we only bought cotton from abroad – greatly increasing our speed to market. This scored us highly among leading buyers.
In addition, it greatly aided in terms of country branding. As this approach had a tremendous positive impact in drastically raising the FoB price of garments. And instead of considering the country only as a tailoring shop – started visiting to see our vertical setups, design and product developments.
What is more, our textile and apparel industry followed in our footsteps and underwent a sea of transformation. Now we see that our country has the most LEED Certified textile factories in addition to many other revolutions.
The root cause of this success is that Bangladeshi people are very open to learning and very easy to work with. The second cause is that our more than 4 million workforces are well capable and fast learners. Entrepreneurs just need to raise their level to make them more efficient.
The third recipe for success is that Bangladesh’s society is very liberal in terms of women working in the apparel industry.
Fourth, I will point out is the highly educated young generations have taken the wheel of leadership – who have global business exposure. Overall, I will say the current textile and apparel industry entrepreneurs are world-class.
Besides, Bangladesh’s banking sector, transport, and port facility i.e. the whole infrastructure have become seasoned players in terms of dealing with the garments business.
To put it in a nutshell, a huge investment, a highly experienced and efficient workforce and entrepreneurs are playing a paramount role in success. And after every critical moment – like the Rana Plaza incident – the Bangladesh RMG industry emerged as a champion and made the industry stronger. Yes, there is always room for improvement – but the country is on the right track.
The only missing thing was a deep seaport and Matarbari deep seaport will soon solve this crisis. Then we will have a much faster lead time as the deep seaport will drastically shorten our shipment time.
In my view, Bangladesh’s textile and apparel industry has nothing to worry about the future of the garment industry. As for the global uncertain politics – these are helping the country’s apparel manufacturing industry to get orders. And new markets are opening up for us – it is not just the Western market.
To accelerate growth instead of focusing inwards we have to focus outwards. As for the future perspective – as Bangladesh planning to export $100 billion in apparel export by 2030 – it should focus on textile machinery manufacturing and maintenance. This diversification will give us the edge to further excel in the value chain. In this regard collaboration, and joint ventures can take place.
Rhabar Hossain 2 Figure 2: Rahbar Hossain, Manager, Textile Today in conversation with Syed Naved Husain.
For Branding Bangladesh, it is important that some Bangladesh companies should partner with major world-renowned brands like in India Tata bought Jaguar, and China bought many brands like Volvo. This will help project BD fashion piggybacking on a high-profile global brand, and this will help change the perception and Bangladesh is only suited for low and middle-market fashion apparel.
The good news is that BEXIMCO is taking the initiative to manufacture textile machinery. There are many textile machinery we manufacture in-house – and we are also in discussion for future collaboration.
What I mean to say, instead of thinking about our overpopulation and land constraint as a burden – we must think out of the box and count our demographic dividend as opportunities.
BEXIMCO motto
Syed Naved Husain: Most importantly, BEXIMCO is not driven by profit – instead, we are driven by three principles – people, planet and profit. We are a family of 40000 people and the company is contributing to the lives of millions of people.
Workers’ welfare
Syed Naved Husain: As for our workers’ welfare, BEXIMCO wants to make its workers have a secure life. We ensure that by investing a portion of their pension funds into stable sectors like real estate. So, by the time workers finish their careers – they will have a good portfolio.
This is how we should envision making Bangladesh’s success inclusive from right up to the ground up to the top. I think that can be easily done.
Recycling
Syed Naved Husain: Beximco has partnered with Recover™ to scale Recover’s recycled fiber production by setting up the largest recycling facility in the world. This partnership allows Beximco to offer the highest-quality woven, knit and denim fabrics that are made with recycled fiber; a transparent supply chain; and sustainable fabric dyeing and finishing production techniques.
Medical PPE
Syed Naved Husain: We started the medical personal protective equipment (PPE), masks and other essentials division with the same motto of people, planet and profit. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a bloodbath everywhere –PPE and other medical protective equipment were a crying need.
In this grievous situation – when every other industry including fashion was cutting manpower, cutting salaries – we at BEXIMCO did not cut any jobs. Instead, we were looking for alternatives. That solution came in the form of PPE. As we are a leading entity in pharmaceuticals, we had an excellent understanding in terms of medical equipment making. Coupled with our textile manufacturing capability – so, we integrated our both knowledge. The cutting-edge vertical facility is capable of producing surgical gowns disposable sterile and non-sterile, reusable isolation gowns, N95 cup type and foldable masks, surgical masks, shoe covers, head covers and reusable scrubs with water-repellent treatment.
In addition, we had an industrial park i.e. PPE Industrial Park, available – where we just redo it to a world-class standard. It is also the first-ever full-fledged PPE Industrial Park in South Asia.
This is how we introduced Bangladesh in the medical PPE and equipment globally.
