Our views on sourcing news

EU’s small rule change makes life easier for global brands 11-Jun-2009

It's suddenly got a lot easier for major brands and retailers to make garments to the same...

Bangladeshi protectionism: it’s Bangladeshis it hurts 10-Jun-2009

No country on earth profits as much from free trade as Bangladesh.Its clothing exports dominate...

What’s going to happen to Arcandor? 09-Jun-2009

Arcandor – the business formerly known as Karstadt-Quelle - filed for bankruptcy because it went...

Clothesource: help for the global sourcing community

Clothesource offers to the world's professional apparel buyers and sellers data, analysis, up to the minute news and one-to-one advice on making the most of the constantly changing apparel trade

Clothesource combines hands-on clothing industry and retail experience with The Clothesource Knowledge Base - the most comprehensive source of information anywhere about sourcing for the apparel industry.

Our unique, ready to buy, publications

Offer understandable and useable in-depth analysis of worldwide apparel sources, prices and trading rules


The Source, our monthly sourcing digest,

Keeps apparel buyers and sellers up to date on current events.

Go here for The Source's latest apparel trading headlines.

Or go here for our latest comments on the big issues.

 

Our consultancy and training services

Help businesses to help find the right strategic solutions for today's problems. Whether they're retailers, brands, garment manufacturers, fabric or fibre manufacturers

Our free downloads section (The Library)

Has full profiles and thumbnail sketches of:

- Apparel sourcing fundamentals
- The major supplying countries and product categories
- Retail markets
- Sourcing shows and meetings

Consultancy 

Clothesource works with companies at all levels in the apparel business – retailers, garment manufacturers and fabric and fibre manufacturers - to help find the right strategic solutions for their business.  Our consultancy projects typically cover
- Helping apparel buyers review or create sourcing strategies,
- Finding new factories for buyers
- Helping suppliers improve their sales.
- Helping industry suppliers evaluate their business basics 

Go here for more information about our consultancy on garment sourcing and garment manufacturing

Training

Clothesource offers tailored in-house training programmes for buyers and merchandisers covering trends in global sourcing, strategic decision making, and finding and managing suppliers.  Clothesource also trains buyers and merchandisers in partnership with the University of Westminster

Go here for more information on how we train buyers to source clothes better

The unique off-the-shelf publications we sell provide most of the information you need.

Clothesource Business Profiles  provide essential information about manufacturing capabilities for the fifty major supplying countries in each major apparel category.

The Clothesource Handbook is the definitive account of the state of the world's apparel trade.

The Clothesource Guide to Trade Regulations summarises rules about apparel trading in English we can all understand.

The Source  is our montly newsletter dedicated to stories that keep you up to date with changes in the global apparel industry, including an archive of articles going back to 2003 

Sourcing Intelligence  is our unique database, providing you with all the information you need on the world’s manufacturing countries.

Go here for a full list of what we sell to make sourcing easier

The Global Sourcing Workshop (London: June 23, 2009)

 

This workshop is designed to help you make the most of your business in the current economic climate, this one-day seminar will:

- Provide the latest information about global sourcing - trends, regional patterns of supply, and economic factors

- Show delegates how to identify new sources of supply, evaluate alternatives to make informed and profitable decisions

- Help you manage your existing supply base more profitably.

The workshop is designed to offer people at all levels in the industry an opportunity to catch up with the latest developments globally. It is an interactive day which will allow you to review your own strategy in the light of recent developments.

 

Click here to download the brochure for our Sourcing Workshop

The Clothesource Guide to Apparel Trade Regulations:

Third Edition, April 2009

The Clothesource Guide to Apparel Trade Regulations has now been updated to include agreements signed by the EU and US to the end of March 2009. No other source summarises so easily how buyers can make the most of the growing number of import duty concessions offered by the EU and US for those sharp enough to spot them. Easier than ever now with The Clothesource Guide to Apparel Trade Regulations

The new Clothesource Sourcing Kit 2009

The new Clothesource Sourcing Kit 2009  offers up-to-date hard  data, imaginatively displayed, so buyers andvendors can  review their sourcing programmes objectively, quickly and affordably

The Clothesource Sourcing Kit gives apparel brands, retailers, consultants and vendors hard up-to-date data about over 100 different countries’ competitiveness in 35 different product categories. Updated to 2008.
It also shows raw material production and processing capacity, and summarises the  import duty and quota restrictions the US and EU impose on each country. The Kit provides macroeconomic information on income and inflation and a summary of the logistic and ethical implications of work in the country

The information for each country and each category is imaginatively displayed, so buyers can review their sourcing programmes objectively, quickly and affordably. And vendors can understand the real competition they’re facing 

Buy now £1750

Clothesource Business Profiles

Clothesource Business Profiles provide the essential information about manufacturing capabilities around the world in each major apparel category.

In each business group, we show where the world’s major apparel importing countries – Japan, the US and EU – buy their garments from, how supplier countries’ share has evolved,  how supplier countries’ price competitiveness varies between countries, and how it has changed since quotas were abolished at the end of 2004.

 

Download the Profiles Brochure

There are separate Business Profiles for

 

Knitwear,

Hosiery,

Intimate/Swim,

Tailoring,

Tops and Dresses,

Trousers and skirts

Casual Outerwear

To start buying, click here

Free from The Library

We're building up The Library to become the best repository of information on the world of sourcing anywhere. Most of it is free.

Separate sections of resources about:

Apparel sourcing fundamentals

Sourcing from specific countries

Sourcing for specific categories

Selling to Western retailers