Business

New Software To Help Garment Makers Reduce Fabric Waste

ThreadSol, a Singapore-headquartered software company, has come up with a solution to reduce fabric waste, helping garmenters to cut down the cost of production.

Apparel makers can count on reducing fabric waste by 0.5-1% with the ThreadSol software, Manasij Ganguli, co-founder and CEO of the company, said.

In other words, garment makers could save 8-10% of fabric costs by using this software, according to Ganguli. Fabric is the main component in garment and the other is accessories. About 70% of the cost is for fabric.

Many factories have been wasting fabrics for years now due to an inefficient, manual cutting system, said Ganguli. More fabric is needed in cutting patterns manually, but the ThreadSol software gives a planned method. How much fabric is needed for a certain number of garment pieces is measured by the software. As a result, waste is low, he said.

Demand for this software is increasing worldwide, especially in Bangladesh, Vietnam and Cambodia, as fabric is usually cut manually in these countries, he added. So far, ThreadSol has supplied this software to 95 factories in 13 countries. Ganguli said the factories that his company supplied the software to produces 25 lakh pieces of garment a day. Every year, those companies' sales amount to about US$ 2.5 billion.

Bangladesh has become an important market for ThreadSol. "The software has potential here as the garment business has been increasing by the year. In Bangladesh, our business is growing 300% year-on-year." Last year, ThreadSol exported software worth US$ 3 million. "My target is to export software worth US$ 100 million in the next six years," he said.

The price range of the ThreadSol software varies between US$ 45,000-75,000. The demand for this software in Bangladesh is higher because the country does not produce cotton and fabric is imported from other countries, mainly from China, India, and Pakistan.

Ganguli and three of his friends started this business four years ago. "Our business growth is extraordinary. We will set up 11 new offices in different countries in the next two years," he said.