06 June 2011

ASEAN Sourcing ~ Supply Chains "Beyond China"

Compelling piece in the Economist on Good darning, Vietnam: Rising costs in China are sending more buyers to South-East Asia...
"...the rag trade is as footloose as its customers are fickle. It goes wherever clothes can be made cheaply and reliably. Until recently, that meant China. But as Chinese wages soar, buyers are looking elsewhere. South-East Asia could be the next big thing. [...] more orders are shifting to lower-wage economies such as Cambodia and Vietnam, where garment factories are mushrooming. Vietnam is already the second-largest supplier of clothes to America. [...] For buyers in a hurry, it is hard to beat China’s mix of scale, speed and flexibility. [...] One way to catch up would be to knit together textile and garment producers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to create a regional supply chain."
And ASEAN is huge, with 600M people in the land-island zone straddling between Indian and Pacific Oceans...

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