The T&T Fash­ion Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Fash­ionTT), in part­ner­ship with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) and Ex­port Cen­tres Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (EC­CL), is es­tab­lish­ing a state-of-the-art pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty that will put T&T's fash­ion in­dus­try at the fore­front gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing.

Lisa-Marie Daniel, gen­er­al man­ag­er of Fash­ionTT re­vealed, "One of the ma­jor draw­backs fac­ing our lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try is low pro­duc­tion vol­ume. Of­ten times de­sign­ers re­ceive re­quests for bulk or­ders but are un­able to meet these de­mands due to lim­it­ed in­fra­struc­ture and re­sources."

A re­lease said, this and oth­er is­sues af­fect­ing man­u­fac­tur­ing, pro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, whole­sal­ing and re­tail­ing were ad­dressed at a re­cent meet­ing of key stake­hold­ers to guide the de­vel­op­ment of a busi­ness mod­el for a gar­ment pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty in T&T.

Ray­mond Wong, Pro­fes­sor at the Fash­ion In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in New York, will be spear­head­ing this ini­tia­tive and was keen on hear­ing the chal­lenges, sug­ges­tions and ad­vice from lo­cal fash­ion stake­hold­ers. This feed­back will be used to shape the busi­ness mod­el for the gar­ment pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty so that it meets the needs and ex­pec­ta­tions of our lo­cal de­sign­ers.

"Some of the ar­eas that will be ad­dressed are prod­uct iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, pro­duc­tion out­puts, im­ple­men­ta­tion of ma­chin­ery, and re­tain­ing con­sis­tent staffing. This fa­cil­i­ty will be the first of its kind for the lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try to of­fer bet­ter mar­gins and qual­i­ty con­trol on the whole­sale end there­fore gen­er­at­ing more re­tail or­ders," Wong said.

He will re­turn to T&T on Sep­tem­ber 15 to present the pro­posed mod­el and next steps for es­tab­lish­ing the fa­cil­i­ty.

Daniel al­so added, "This gar­ment pro­duc­tion fa­cil­i­ty will al­low lo­cal de­sign­ers to be­come ma­jor play­ers in the glob­al fash­ion scene. Not on­ly will they have ac­cess to a first class man­u­fac­tur­ing cen­tre but this fa­cil­i­ty will al­so en­sure the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of our lo­cal fash­ion in­dus­try through rev­enue gen­er­a­tion and job cre­ation."