高品质时尚市场基于现代技术具有相对优厚的劳动力和设计师以不同程度的灵活性。许多公司在这个行业内的尝试捕获通过各种设计旨在满足的口味和偏好的消费者的市场。高品质时尚市场下企业绝大多数都是在发达国家和工业化国家。
批量生产低质量或标准产品市场是在发展中国家发现的。这些类别基本上从事生产制服、内裤、t 恤和更多。他们发现，在出口区工作的主要进口商，如果工业化的国家。在这一市场外包基本上是家庭制作。
The Clothing industries operate under free import quotas. This means that both clothing and textile industries do not have to pay import tariffs when importing raw materials connected to clothing and textiles. These tariffs are made possible by the World Trade Organisation, to improve the importation of varied clothing among producing countries. As a result of the protectionism, many developing countries producing clothing were able to survive the industry. This however did not go well with the developed countries since there were great competition between the developing countries like China and the developed countries.
On the part of employment, the industry has engaged the services of millions of people worldwide and also with other individuals who are not registered but work in their homes and factories. The industry was the first to trade on a global dimension, simply because of the low barriers in entering the production of clothing. The industry is governed by the international labour laws, employing the most sensitive part of the labour force with females and ethnic minority as the leading employees. Most of the employees are immigrants. The European community, and the US and UK also have blacks as the major employees of the industry. Most of the producing countries in the developing world have females as the majority of employees in the industry. As indicated above, the total labour force of the clothing industry is made up of 80% of women. This is largely due to the fact that women are immobile and therefore are able to take care of domestic chores. A greater number of the female workforce is also unskilled or semi-skilled. In the developing countries, many of the workers spend up to 12-14 hours per day and are paid with very low wages,
THE PRODUCTION CIRCUIT
The clothing industry is part of a large circuit which involves the production of textiles. The industry is more fragmented organisationally and less technological in nature. The industry outsource most of it components and products. The garment industry therefore produces to unpredicted consumer markets. The industry serves as a distribution point for all garments. Through retailer efforts, the organisationa€™s geography has been shaped accordingly. The industry is also known as a buyer driven industry, in the sense that they purchase most of the raw materials from producing countries worldwide.
There are six stages that individual producing countries have passed through, that is from the embryonic stage to the maturity and decline stage of the development process of the clothing industry. This can be seen in (Figure 1 below).
The stages indicate how raw materials flow within the industry, from the fabric production stage, design, preparation, production, distribution and consumption stage. In the reverse state is the information flow from customer orders down to the fabric production stage. There is no much technological change since inception of the clothing industry. The majority still uses the manual operations due to the complex nature of the production process.
The clothing industry can be related to a supply chain function, where activities flow from raw materials to textile designs, apparel plants through distribution centers and other retail stores to consumers. The chain is seen as an integrated network of marketing from production stage to the finish product to consumers. The various activities are located where each can be able to make a contribution to the value of the finished product. The various variables considered in the industry include quality, cost, reliability, access to quality inputs and transportation cost. From the figure 2 above, the black lines represents the flow of goods whereas the white lines represent the flow of information. The arrows
