Value, Price Focus at Prime Source

HONG KONG — As producers and apparel brands continue to struggle with rising production costs in China, manufacturers have been emphasizing service and technology as well as quality over price competitiveness. Adding value was a major theme at the latest Prime Source Forum here. Unlike in past years, when the focus was on finding the next cheapest manufacturing destination, there was more of a consensus this year among participants that rising production costs were an inescapable fact and signaled a changing paradigm for the industry. “We’re typically the first ones into a country and then the first ones out of a country,” said Steven DiBlasi, vice president of global sourcing at Lanier Clothes. “We go in when there’s unemployment, low wages — wages go up, we move. We can’t continue to do that going forward. We’re going to run out of countries that we can afford from a compliance standpoint.” To be sure, there was still discussion of newer, cheaper markets. Adan Mohamed, cabinet secretary at the Ministry of Industrialization and Enterprise Development for the Republic of Kenya, was at the conference making a case for his country as a low-cost sourcing alternative. But more of the discussion centered around what manufacturers and

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