SAVAR, BANGLADESH and TORONTO — The Globe and Mail
At about 8:30 a.m. one morning in April, a generator rumbled to life at Rana Plaza – rattling the building, as it always did when it started.
Work had just begun at the welter of garment factories when the power went out. So a manager on the seventh floor, home to the New Wave Style factory, was quick to stand up as the lights went back on and announce that the building was safe. Everyone should continue doing their jobs. But this time, Rana Plaza didn’t stop shaking.
“He died on the spot as he was announcing that we should keep working,” Raehana Akhter recalls. Then she fell, too. “It was like stepping into an elevator [shaft]. I felt this feeling in my stomach, and then everything fell.” When she landed, Ms. Akhter, a 22-year-old mother who worked as a quality control officer for about $2 a day, was in complete darkness, with her left leg trapped under shattered cement. “The ceiling was just here,” she says, putting her hand about 30 centimetres above her face. “I felt like this would be my little grave.”
..........
Excerpt 2
As garment factories have pushed into new markets in search of ever-cheaper labour, the apparel industry has become perhaps the ultimate symbol of two decades of globalization. Once a cornerstone of Canadian industry on Spadina Ave. in Toronto and Chabanel St. in Montreal, the manufacturing of clothing now ties together Western consumers and distant Asian workers in a cycle driven by trends and budgets that change with the seasons. No product better represents how our economy has been altered than the global tee, the fashion basic that’s sold for miraculously cheap prices, sometimes just $5.
As
The Globe and Mail found during more than two months tracking such
T-shirts – from the cotton fields of China to the gleaming offices of
Hong Kong and Singapore, to factories in Cambodia and Bangladesh
and back to Canadian stores – supply chains are increasingly fragmented.
Production leapfrogs from city to city. Middlemen outsource to other
middlemen. Governments make bold claims but few checks on safety. And
the consumer knows little about the long and tortuous path journey of
that T-shirt to the store – only that it has become far more affordable
than it ever used to be.
Yet as the ties between countries have become stronger, accountability has become a loose thread. The Globe’s investigation shows how companies such as Loblaw place their orders through middlemen, who in turn source work to a network of far-flung factories. The retailer whose shelves are stocked with cheap T-shirts in many cases does not know where in the world it or its materials is going to be produced when an order is placed. Inspecting buildings and working conditions has been beyond the retailer’s scope.
..........
Excerpt 3
No one personifies the middle man more than Bruce Rockowitz.
The 53-year-old – originally from Vancouver – is the chief executive officer of Li & Fung, the industry’s largest middleman.
After moving to Hong Kong from Canada in 1979, Mr. Rockowitz co-founded his own trading house – and outbid established players to land major American clients. Soon, one of those established players, Li & Fung, founded in 1906, bought up his company and asked him to head up the firm. (The first non-Fung to do so.) Since then he’s expanded the company’s network to 15,000 factories across Asia.
Along the way, the gregarious Mr. Rockowitz has also become a billionaire, married a local pop star and, when he’s not working at the glass-clad LiFung Tower, is seen driving a blue Bentley with a “Rock 8” licence plate around the city.
But that flash shouldn’t deflect attention to his real power over the supply chain. He works with such industry giants as Wal-Mart and Tommy Hilfiger. Hudson’s Bay Co. has Li & Fung manage much of its apparel outsourcing. And Loblaw and Joe Fresh are another client.
Twice a year, designers from Joseph Mimran & Associates, the creators of the Joe Fresh line for Loblaw Cos. Ltd. (Mr. Mimran is the “Joe” in Joe Fresh”), travel to Asia clutching precious cargo – the next season’s designs – which are then passed on to factory bosses.
Those bosses say that when deals are consummated, middlemen generally take about 5 per cent of the contract’s value from each side.
To Mr. Rockowitz, the logic of outsourcing the outsourcing is inescapable.
“Retailers are very focused on opening stores, marketing, designing product,” he says. “We focus on the supply-chain aspect, the sourcing side, the logistics side, and then creating brands they don’t want to do in-house … basically, doing what our customers don’t want to do, so that they can focus on growing their business.”
THE ENTIRE ARTICLE CAN BE READ HERE.
As garment factories have pushed into new markets in search of ever-cheaper labour, the apparel industry has become perhaps the ultimate symbol of two decades of globalization. Once a cornerstone of Canadian industry on Spadina Ave. in Toronto and Chabanel St. in Montreal, the manufacturing of clothing now ties together Western consumers and distant Asian workers in a cycle driven by trends and budgets that change with the seasons. No product better represents how our economy has been altered than the global tee, the fashion basic that’s sold for miraculously cheap prices, sometimes just $5.
 | |||
| A child is seen in a residential area adjacent to the Dignity Knitter garment factory in Sa’ang District, Kandal province, Cambodia. Factory workers rent small rooms in the compound – which has one water pump and four squat toilets – for just a few dollars a month. (Photo source: Lauren Crothers for the Globe and Mail) |
Yet as the ties between countries have become stronger, accountability has become a loose thread. The Globe’s investigation shows how companies such as Loblaw place their orders through middlemen, who in turn source work to a network of far-flung factories. The retailer whose shelves are stocked with cheap T-shirts in many cases does not know where in the world it or its materials is going to be produced when an order is placed. Inspecting buildings and working conditions has been beyond the retailer’s scope.
..........
Excerpt 3
No one personifies the middle man more than Bruce Rockowitz.
The 53-year-old – originally from Vancouver – is the chief executive officer of Li & Fung, the industry’s largest middleman.
After moving to Hong Kong from Canada in 1979, Mr. Rockowitz co-founded his own trading house – and outbid established players to land major American clients. Soon, one of those established players, Li & Fung, founded in 1906, bought up his company and asked him to head up the firm. (The first non-Fung to do so.) Since then he’s expanded the company’s network to 15,000 factories across Asia.
Along the way, the gregarious Mr. Rockowitz has also become a billionaire, married a local pop star and, when he’s not working at the glass-clad LiFung Tower, is seen driving a blue Bentley with a “Rock 8” licence plate around the city.
But that flash shouldn’t deflect attention to his real power over the supply chain. He works with such industry giants as Wal-Mart and Tommy Hilfiger. Hudson’s Bay Co. has Li & Fung manage much of its apparel outsourcing. And Loblaw and Joe Fresh are another client.
Twice a year, designers from Joseph Mimran & Associates, the creators of the Joe Fresh line for Loblaw Cos. Ltd. (Mr. Mimran is the “Joe” in Joe Fresh”), travel to Asia clutching precious cargo – the next season’s designs – which are then passed on to factory bosses.
Those bosses say that when deals are consummated, middlemen generally take about 5 per cent of the contract’s value from each side.
To Mr. Rockowitz, the logic of outsourcing the outsourcing is inescapable.
“Retailers are very focused on opening stores, marketing, designing product,” he says. “We focus on the supply-chain aspect, the sourcing side, the logistics side, and then creating brands they don’t want to do in-house … basically, doing what our customers don’t want to do, so that they can focus on growing their business.”
THE ENTIRE ARTICLE CAN BE READ HERE.
-Submitted by Kathleen
No comments:
Post a Comment