T - Shirts Industry - India - V

The future of T-shirt Industry in India

Movies, film stars and celebrities play an important role in suggesting the youths to wear stylish T-shirts. Sometimes people become aware of a new collection only after the film stars or celebrities wear them in movies. Film stars make a fashion statement by wearing their words on T-shirt, while other celebrities make their statements a bit in a different way or in their choosy styles. Even Sushmita Sen's sari-look in 'Main Hoon Na' movie liked by people but personally she prefers to wear jeans and a T-shirt.


T-shirts are also increasingly being used in Indian corporate houses to motivate employees, to build brand loyalty in the market as well as to display the company's attitude by displaying its motto or slogan in front of stakeholders. Today in major corporate houses promotional T-shirts became very popular as corporate gifts and more and more corporate or promotional T-shirts are demanding in the market, manufacturers are also manufacturing best quality designer-type pieces with buyers' logos, institutional advertising, slogans and emblems on T-shirts as well as for the end users. During the last cricket world cup, one of the Net portals sold some 60,000 promotional T-shirts in 60 days.

After WTO textile quotas were removed in January, traders of T-shirts in India observed export demand growth by 25 percent in the first quarter of this year in against the same period of 2004.

The export of ladies' blouses is up 26% to 29 million euros, jerseys and pullovers are up 12%, and men's T-shirts are up 37%. The collective export of blouses, skirts and T-shirts were about Rs 9,000 crore last year. The India's accomplishment has been amazing in four categories (as below) which had been eliminated by quota and it has been capable to maximize the use of quota levels, these cover T-shirts (Cat-4), ladies blouse (Cat-7), gents shirts (Cat-8) and ladies dresses (Cat-26). Amid the above categories, T-shirts has a bigger share in the top 10 categories trapping around 8.2 per cent of the total MFA imports of EU.

To satisfy the increased demand and seize market opportunities, many manufacturers and traders are adding new production lines and even building new factories. Many companies are improving their technology too. Main production centers of T-shirts in India are Tirupur, Mumbai, Kolkata, Delhi and Ludhiana.

Recently Tetriberica, a Portugal based apparel manufacturing company has opened an India office at Tirupur with the aim of providing sportswear and T-shirts in Indian market, and many international companies are looking towards the growth by targeting the Indian market. A new production unit in Gujarat has been establishing by T.T. Ltd for T-shirt manufacturing. Pytex Hosiery Mills is also constructing a new factory in Haryana to increase its production capacity. And many Indian T-shirt manufacturers are improving their production facilities and developing their capability among the challenge of stiff competition passed on by the lifting of quotas.