Vendor Summit

Brandix pledges to push beyond limits for growth

A strategy of aggressively pushing for higher market share in selected product categories has enabled Sri Lanka’s Brandix Group to achieve healthy growth in the first half of 2009, despite global retail inventories shrinking by 20 per cent, the country’s top apparel exporter has disclosed.
The Group’s apparel sales have seen a tremendous growth in 2008 and in the first six months of the current year in the face of a US$ 17 billion drop in retail sales last year, contracting inventories and lower average unit costs, Brandix CEO Ashroff Omar told supply chain partners at the Brandix Vendor Summit in Colombo recently.
Top vendors to Brandix had benefitted significantly as a result of the Group’s commitment to direct more business to preferred suppliers, said Omar, revealing that continued growth would be possible by re-engineering vendor cost structures, focusing on ‘Trend-right Fashion’, reducing concept-to-store lead times, flexibility on speed and pricing, unrelenting commitment to on-time delivery (OTD) & quality and a focus on sustainability initiatives.
More than 150 supply chain partners and 30 foreign visitors participated at Brandix’ Vendor Summit, themed ‘Beyond the Limits’.
Stressing that “in our quest to push beyond the limits we will have to challenge every paradigm that exists today,” Mr. Omar cited examples of how Brandix had grown its underwear segment from a virtually insignificant category to one that represents a third of the Group’s business in just two years. Brandix had also been the first apparel manufacturer to invest in a factory in the eastern province and achieved a world first with its LEED Platinum-rated eco-friendly apparel factory, he pointed out.
Brandix Director Udena Wickremesooriya whose presentation focused on ‘the shape of things to come’ disclosed that the biggest challenge facing the industry was how to bring prices down, crash lead times, and achieve flawless execution in terms of on-time delivery whilst offering a ‘Best Price’ proposition.
A highlight of the event was the presentation of awards to the nine top vendor partners of Brandix. The award categories were Best Support Product Partner, Best Apparel Service Provider, Most Innovative Partner - Accessories, Most Innovative Partner - Textile, Best Emerging Partner - Accessories, Best Emerging Partner - Textile, Most Flexible Partner, Vendor of the Year - Textile and Vendor of the Year - Accessories.

Tigo, Mobily in cooperation talks

A team from Tigo Sri Lanka returned from Riyadh following talks with telecom giant Mobily. The meeting evaluated possibilities of establishing an understanding between the two telecom companies, aimed at exploring ways and means of maximizing on the Etisalat group of companies and synergizing operations to positively impact Sri Lanka.
Tigo CEO Dumindra Ratnayaka said, “This sharing of expertise will help us move towards providing superior, more innovative and customer-focused products and services.” Etisalat has prominent global presence in the Saudi, UAE and the subcontinent- we hope to leverage on the stakes held in those countries in order to benefit Sri Lanka.”
Mobily is the brand name of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s key telecommunications company, the Etihad-Etisalat consortium
The talks between Tigo and Mobily are an initial step towards creating a telephonic revolution in Sri Lanka, through increased global synergy in product and service range, and impacting core areas of international communications such as international roaming and international direct dialing. It will also focus on bringing down technology, products, services, content and content management tools. Being the first cellular network in Sri Lanka, Tigo Sri Lanka has one of the largest mobile networks in the country. Since it’s inception in 1989 twenty years ago, Tigo has consistently provided not only the widest coverage and an unprecedented level of service, but also a host of other innovative solutions to the Sri Lankan market. So brace yourself for the mobile telephony revolution that this explosive alliance will create!