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Classic Fashion, a Jordan-based clothing manufacturer, intends to add 5,000 employees in India, of which 1,000 will be added by 2024. Sanal Kumar, Chairman and Managing Director, Classic Fashion, told businessline that because of Walmart’s aim to purchase $10 billion worth of goods from India annually by 2027, the company got an opportunity to enter the Indian market.
The company, which started its operation in India in 2021, currently employs 4,000 people and manufactures goods at a plant in Tirupur “Being one of Walmart’s long-standing partners, we got an export order and manufactured over 6 million pieces of apparel worth $21 million in 2021,” said Kumar. The apparel manufacturer has been working with Walmart since 2006, and today almost 40 per cent of the total business comes from Walmart.
Will expand
“We started in Tirupur—only because the first order that we got was a knit-based order. However, we will not limit ourselves to knits and will expand into woven and other Walmart categories, which we are already producing in Jordan, and possibly step up to use more capacities initially in the South, and then down the line and have more verticals set up in India,” he explained.
According to the company, it currently has a capacity of 4,000 people, and the man-to-machine ratio is 1:2, with 2,000 machines in Tirupur producing 47,000 pieces of apparel daily. “There are three factories, and we’re using one of them. It is a vertical setup; they make their own fabrics, but not at the scale at which a vertical setup should be. Our job is to increase the capacity of this factory by investing money in it for the product and to improve the infrastructure for all.”
The company has clients including Walmart, Adidas, Under Armour, Target, American Eagle, DKNY, Nautica, and more. Looking ahead, the Chairman said that Classic Fashion is open to shifting its manufacturing for its other clients to India as and when an opportunity comes.
$806 million turnover
“India is shaping up as a destination that most business enterprises should look upon. I am positive that Classic may invest and possibly grow big over here,” noted Kumar.
In 2021, the company generated a turnover of $806 million and added $50 million in business from Bangladesh and $21 million from India during the same year.
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