When I visited Denimsandjeans Vietnam last year, I was impressed by local mills, who showed nice commercial denims which are used by the local garment producers. What has changed since last year? First we look at the local heroes.
R&D is playing a bigger role now and their new products can be compared with developments out of the creative mills in Asia. The best example is TCE who showed "Zero Cotton" fabrics, where cotton is replaced by Tencel, silk, Rayon and Lyocell. This company concentrates now on completely vertical and sustainable business.
Aside from TCE there is another highly interesting company — JOMU. The company is directed by the young swiss-canadian Nicolas Koehl, who is even prepared to start spinning hemp yarns. Jomu is a completely vertical setup and ready to accept even small orders for jeans and denim jackets.
Not all Vietnamese mills show the same level of creativity but, in general, denims out of Vietnam are reasonable and commercial fabrics. Sandeep Agarwal, founder of Denimsandjeans, made an important change. For the fourth issue of Denimsandjeans Vietnam, garment producers showed their products and presented their factories. This fair is really the first "one stop sourcing solution" for Vietnam. Let's hope that more of the big players will show up with their products at this fair in 2020 and as well as more European buyers and sourcing experts when there will be even more garment producers.
For jeans production for the European market, you sure will need fabrics from other Asian countries. Prosperity from China would be one of the mills to consider. They are also running a modern mill in Vietnam and are very happy with the results of this investment. Another mill from China is Foison, who showed alongside its beautiful denims very good flats — the result of a collaboration with Lenzing.
The big Pakistani mills have been there as expected.
At Artistic Milliners, Irfan Khan showed a new development out of industrial waste. The fabric is not dyed and shows a light blueish grey. Colors are possible if a coating is added. Of course, Artistic Milliners is also doing cradle to cradle production. Zaki at Indigo showed stunning new fabrics, linen (rigid and elastic), and lighter fabrics. At Kassim, Umair Javed presented "feather touch," a newly engineered soft denim. Crescent Bahuman has clients in Vietnam who use their classic OE and ring/OE "old school" denims. They showed as well no cotton (Tencel) fabrics and other really light denims. Salman Moten presented the best denims at Soorty — all ecologically correct, sustainable. All Pakistani mills are fully complying.
Anubha from India wants to take a nice piece of the denim market in Vietnam. They are already working with hemp yarns.
For your jeans production in Vietnam, everything is there: local mills produce decent and reasonable basic fabrics and TCE is reaching a good international level. There are great factories for your production who are able to confirm orders of any size and they have laundries who work in compliance to European standards. Creative fabrics are easily accessible from China, India and Pakistan. Denimsandjeans Vietnam became a fair which emulated into a one stop solution for denim sourcing in Vietnam.
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