From The Readers Minds!

4th Edition

Editorial

Inside apparel is built as a platform for not just our writers to express, but also for our readers to opine & share their points of views. 

We are thankful to all our readers for sharing multi faceted and thought provoking comments with us. It makes this journey of learning fruitful and encourages us to write more.

With each comment we learn something new and insightful.

We are sharing some of these opinions & comments from our MY SOURCING JOURNAL SERIES. We are unable to represent every comment here, but would urge you to read through them at leisure. The links for the articles are provided below.

THE SOURCING JOURNAL series consists of 6 articles :

1. Selecting the right vendor
2. A clean sourcing organisation - Is it really possible?
3. The much maligned T&A in sourcing
4. Regional or centralised, what really works!
5. Reducing COGS - The eternal quest
6. Reviews - The secret to operational excellence

Now let’s look at the varied comments posted by our readers! Enjoy the insights

PAYMENT ON TIME

Well structured and articulated, finance - payment on time and maybe we need many Tim Cook like genius with inventory management and payment on time, then our industry in India can have many billion dollar brands like P&G had but in our geography called India.

 - Sai Navneethan Markandan, Regional Head South Asia Markets Sustainable Products

SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT - KEY TO SUCCESS

Very well articulated. Supplier Relationship Management is the key to success for both, the brand and the business partners / suppliers. It's also very important how do we classify and reward our business partners in terms of their performance considering both hard and soft skills. I also felt that Sustainability initiatives should also be considered while a supplier selection is being done alongside capacity, capability, willingness, investment and growth, quality etc., 

- Sairam Sharma, DGM Sourcing, Arvind Fashions Limited

PARTNERS IN PROGRESS

Sourcing and vendor selection is equally a common sense approach. It is a relationship where vendor & brand OR retailer over the period supplement each other and become partners in progress.

A person with right attitude is the biggest and most imp deciding factor and I suppose such entity can always be cultivated to be a reliable & long term vendor – gradually other supporting pillars can always be created with intelligent nurturing and regular support

Indian value system largely gives importance to an element of trust or BHAROSA & PURANA SAMBANDH which plays a big role in uninterrupted supply chain and it’s mutual. 

India consumption story is real one and with very few factories with scale and understanding of the business brands need to create sustainable supply base to stay relevant and profitable 

- Paresh shah

IDEAL COLLABORATOR CHARACTERISTICS

I recently went through a program ‘Become’ conducted by Kaospilot, Denmark. They asked us to do an exercise of finding ‘ideal collaborator characteristics’. This was a very interesting exercise where I looked at colleagues I have worked with as well as my clients and other collaborators.

Very interestingly this led to looking at things that are tacit and not explicit. My list was:
1. Attitude of giving more than taking
2. Connectedness to a larger cause
3. Mutual respect and trust
4. Having deeper personal connect than just being a collaborator in a task
5. Wisdom and continuous quest for learning

This list made sense to me because this is what I stand for. Hence I believe that alignment in terms of deeper principles and values are far more important in choosing any collaborator – be it a vendor or even customer! 

- Raja Chidambaram

SIMPLIFIED PROTOCOLS ARE THE KEY

The weight of over adventurism could be a real drag. Weaving the ecosystem around simplified protocols should add to the success. 

- Prashant Kumar, General Manager - Technical Services & QA, Pantaloons

A DATA DRIVEN DECISION MAKING

Interesting article and something which is a real problem in our industry. The more data driven the decision making is the cleaner and transparent the sourcing setup will be. Constant benchmarking of prices is also important to ensure such problems are caught quickly. 

- Gunish Jain (CEO, Bluekaktus)

BEST PRACTICES - A TOP DOWN APPROACH

It’s high time to make changes in the structure and processes as suggested by you to ensure integrity is intact and served with honesty and perseverance of following best practices as a Top-down approach.

Also would like to mention the sense of achievement and the respect which such a person generates from co-workers and people with who you are dealing. They become friends for life and a great support system like a family in the work space!!! 

- Sarika Arora, Head Corporate Sales at Royal Data Matics Pvt. Ltd.

TNA - FREE MIND

Throughout my sourcing career, TNA was my best buddy. Can’t emphasise how well it fares in pooling/managing the data and keep mind free from working data clutter. Apparently brain can be utilised for other cognitive processes like decision making. 

- Soumya Nair

SIMPLE THINGS ARE THE DIFFICULT ONES

While TNA is the most efficient tool it is time-consuming and one needs to be very patient enough to update at regular intervals. As it is said the most simple things are the difficult ones to do and adopt.

When the Business head or the management is serious about TNA and they review regularly, then every merchant would update. Initially, a merchant would feel the tool is cumbersome and a waste of time, but once he adopts it in his routine he will find the real benefit of it. 

- Prashanth HV , Product Strategy, Royal Enfield Apparel

BUILD REGIONAL CHAMPIONS

"decentralization" always the key to success BUT lot of sincere efforts need to be put in to build "champions" who would own up region wise "spokes" and run non-stop like n well oiled machine day in and day out independently thereby being the CORE DRIVERS/PILLARS of entire supply chain. 

- BS Prasad Apparel Specialist, Consultant – Continuous Improvement / SCQM and Entrepreneur

A HUB AND SPOKE MODEL

Fortunately, during my past work experience I have been part of Hub and the Spoke Model, and it works wonderfully. Ensuring you are getting the best product at the best cost as various Spoke`s, besides sourcing what is the niche of the region also compete against each other in cost competitiveness and timely delivery.

And of course, it comes with the right amount of empowerment to the regional teams. 

- Sarika Arora, Head Corporate Sales at Royal Data Matics Pvt. Ltd.

AN INDUSTRY AGNOSTIC PRINCIPLE

In my opinion, this is equally applicable across all the industries, of course, in different versions but the principle remains same.

Costing, direct or indirect, does impact the end user, the customer. Therefore, every organisation should look at how this factor can be looked at holistically in a manner that the end user gets the resultant benefit.

Having said so, my own observation is that corporates or organisations are not transparent in their financial dealings, be it contracts, bidding process, or even routine purchases. There are no standardised processes to monitor this important aspect. Vendor favouritism is the norm of the day and is readily accepted, without any question, thus directly impacting and jeopardising the profits/savings. Though, this is another point of discussion but is also interlinked and therefore, worth pondering.

- Wing Commander RD Deshpande (Retired), Learning and Development at BYJU'S

PASSING ON VS TAKING OUT

It's interesting to note the difference between "passing on" a specific cost down the value chain AND "taking out" a specific cost out of the value chain that will in real terms will be beneficial to the real end consumer. 

- Gaurav Kumar, Head - India Procurement at Compass

INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING TEAMS ASSESSMENT

As part of support to the sourcing teams in defining cost accuracy can be done by partnering with the industrial engineering teams. The IE teams can assess, evaluate and provide in-depth analysis on the entire cost structure of an production unit like cost per minute and efficiencies which the production unit generally work on. This will help the sourcing teams decide and select on the production unit as well as on the product capability front of the production unit / business partners. An other theory to establish with the design teams while working on COGS is to have a consolidated COGS % for the season. This will help sourcing teams to average out the costs on an overall product basket. 

- Sairam Sharma, DGM Sourcing, Arvind Fashions Limited

LONG TERM COST IMPACT OF PROCESSES

Great ideas! Would like to add another element – the sourcing process. Very often we build processes – which are checks and balances, without realising the implication it has on long term costs. I have often used this example – imaging if you had a vendor base where for all styles, no fit approval process was required. How much saving does it give you in terms of cost and lead time. Investing in improving vendor factory processes and working with building factories with greater capabilities really helps in reducing overall costs. So, taking up pilot projects with vendors really helps. The Quality team should be focused on this.

- Gunish Jain (CEO, Bluekaktus)

LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY

It is very important for individual contributors ( merchants) to be able to leverage technology to view insights from Data rather than running after collating the data and cleaning the data so that it is in presentable form. The organisation should empower the team with the latest tools, rather than depending on the excel sheets. And the tool should be accepted throughout the organisation.

Also, the day of the review meeting with the individual contributors is very important. Whether it is on the first day or the last day of the working week. I believe the review meet with individual contributors should be on the last day of the working week so that they don’t lose the precious weekend to unwind.

- Mehul

ANONYMOUS FEEDBACK

Key point is Review and the sub point is Practice team / environment.

The basis of review mentioned in the article is like walking in a cul-de-sac.

The boss is doing a review based on the data available but what about the Proactive team and environment building? How is this taken into account?

The best way is to get the anonymous feedback from the other parties involved– the fabric suppliers, the trim suppliers, the factories, the logistics and the finance.

Each of them will give a true picture of a person, how well he tackled the problems and how much realistic money he saved for the company.

This will be true proactive team and environment building which will help the company to grow.

- Sanjay Lal – Co-Founder, Sash Exports (Buying House)

CONCLUSION

Sourcing is one of the most important pillars of the apparel industry and implementing best practices and innovating processes is of utmost importance. More so in this era of change and upheaval. 

These articles and comments have shed light on various aspects of the sourcing function and compelled us to think differently, strategically and with a future perspective.

Our readers have made the discussion fruitful with exciting insights into this subject.

I hope you enjoyed reading this series on sourcing. 

We will come back with more exciting articles in the future. Do share your comments & thoughts with us…

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