India noted significant surge of 28.88 per cent in its kidswear exports to USA in 2019.
According to OTEXA, India exported kidswear worth US $ 265.74 million to USA in 2019. That’s around 12 per cent of total kidswear import value of USA, which stood at US $ 2.26 billion.
Markedly, India noted rise despite USA falling in its kidswear by 3.11 per cent on Y-o-Y basis. China, with an export value of US $ 840.50 million, again became an epicentre of this disruption as it plunged by significant 16.05 per cent and gave an opportunity to other countries to capture the shift.
The data suggests India was able to grab the shift due to its ability of making quality kidswear. The closest competitor of India in kidswear exports to USA is Vietnam, which shipped US $ 260.51 million worth kidswear to USA in 2019, marking 12.18 per cent growth.
It is believed that moving business from China is bound to go to Vietnam, which interestingly did not happen in kidswear category in 2019, if data is anything to go by.
“This might have happened as big volume orders, excluding kidswear, got shifted to Vietnam from China. India is also losing low FOB business to Bangladesh. Due to this, India really needed to drive higher FOB business like kidswear, which is more fashion-driven product and needs a lot of compliances, safety parameters and quality. This has always been our forte, and this is why we could tap significant growth in kidswear exports in 2019,” told Raghavendra Shah, Senior Vice President (Knits), Texport Industries, Bengaluru (India) to Apparel Resources who is hopeful that China is not going to recover in upcoming months and India will get benefit out of it.
Bangladesh’s growth too remained decent as it upped it kidswear export to USA by 8.18 per cent to ship US $ 207.93 worth of kids’ apparels. The data also indicates that Bangladesh is diversifying successfully in product categories other than basic commodities like T-shirts, trousers and shirts.