JES­SEL BRIZAN

Does the Caribbean ac­tu­al­ly have a fash­ion sup­ply chain?

It is an un­com­fort­able ques­tion be­cause the re­gion clear­ly has many of the in­di­vid­ual com­po­nents, in­clud­ing de­sign­ers, gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ers, tex­tile and trim sup­pli­ers, ar­ti­sans, print­ers, re­tail­ers, lo­gis­tics providers, and fash­ion schools.

But a col­lec­tion of sup­pli­ers does not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­sti­tute a sup­ply chain. A sup­ply chain ex­ists when these com­po­nents are suf­fi­cient­ly con­nect­ed to move a prod­uct ef­fi­cient­ly from in­puts to pro­duc­tion to mar­ket. It re­quires a well-co­or­di­nat­ed net­work of re­li­able sup­pli­ers, pre­dictable lead times, ad­e­quate pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty, lo­gis­tics, ef­fec­tive in­for­ma­tion man­age­ment, fi­nance, and mar­ket de­mand.

By that de­f­i­n­i­tion, the Caribbean has el­e­ments of a fash­ion sup­ply chain. How­ev­er, it has yet to de­vel­op a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed re­gion­al fash­ion sup­ply chain. This dis­tinc­tion could be cru­cial in de­ter­min­ing whether Caribbean fash­ion re­mains a col­lec­tion of small cre­ative en­ter­pris­es or de­vel­ops in­to a com­pet­i­tive re­gion­al in­dus­try.

The frag­ment­ed val­ue chain

Ac­cord­ing to the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank’s 2022 analy­sis of glob­al val­ue chains in tex­tiles and cloth­ing, the in­dus­try is a high­ly glob­alised, mul­ti-tril­lion-dol­lar sec­tor dom­i­nat­ed by large pro­duc­tion net­works (Fer­nán­dezS­tark et al., 2022). The analy­sis al­so iden­ti­fies hu­man cap­i­tal, in­vest­ment and hard and soft in­fra­struc­ture as im­por­tant re­quire­ments for pro­duc­ers seek­ing to strength­en their par­tic­i­pa­tion in these val­ue chains.

The Caribbean large­ly op­er­ates out­side these net­works. Al­though the re­gion has some man­u­fac­tur­ing ca­pa­bil­i­ty, the con­nec­tions be­tween de­sign, pro­duc­tion, in­puts, and mar­kets are too frag­ment­ed to achieve the ef­fi­cien­cies of a ma­ture sup­ply chain.

A man­u­fac­tur­er may have pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty but in­con­sis­tent or­der vol­umes, where­as a tex­tile en­tre­pre­neur may have in­no­v­a­tive prod­ucts yet lack re­li­able re­gion­al cus­tomers. Each busi­ness may suc­ceed with­in its niche, yet the over­all sys­tem re­mains dis­con­nect­ed.

Scale is the first prob­lem

The eco­nom­ics of Caribbean man­u­fac­tur­ing are shaped by small, frag­ment­ed mar­kets. A man­u­fac­tur­er serv­ing a sin­gle is­land may not have suf­fi­cient de­mand to op­er­ate ef­fi­cient­ly. Like­wise, a de­sign­er pro­duc­ing on­ly 50 gar­ments can­not ef­fec­tive­ly ne­go­ti­ate prices with sup­pli­ers as an in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny or­der­ing thou­sands of gar­ments.

This cre­ates a vi­cious cy­cle in which low pro­duc­tion vol­umes in­crease unit costs, mak­ing prod­ucts less com­pet­i­tive. Re­duced com­pet­i­tive­ness low­ers de­mand, which in turn pre­vents busi­ness­es from reach­ing the pro­duc­tion vol­umes need­ed to re­duce costs.

Re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion could help break this cy­cle. Rather than each coun­try pro­duc­ing every com­po­nent of a gar­ment, busi­ness­es across the re­gion should spe­cialise in dis­tinct stages of pro­duc­tion with­in an in­te­grat­ed net­work.

The case for re­gion­al spe­cial­i­sa­tion

A func­tion­ing Caribbean fash­ion sup­ply chain could dif­fer from the ver­ti­cal­ly in­te­grat­ed fac­to­ries of ma­jor Asian pro­duc­tion cen­tres. In this mod­el, one coun­try might spe­cialise in gar­ment man­u­fac­tur­ing, an­oth­er in ac­ces­sories, and a third in dig­i­tal tex­tile print­ing or fin­ish­ing. The goal would be to en­able busi­ness­es to par­tic­i­pate in var­i­ous stages of pro­duc­tion while ac­cess­ing a larg­er re­gion­al mar­ket. This aligns with re­gion­al val­ue chain think­ing. An IDB project to en­hance re­gion­al val­ue chains in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean recog­nis­es pro­duc­tive in­te­gra­tion as a means of con­nect­ing firms and strength­en­ing re­gion­al eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty (IDB, 2021). The re­gion does not need 14 sep­a­rate fash­ion in­dus­tries; it needs a more in­ter­con­nect­ed Caribbean fash­ion econ­o­my.

Cari­com pro­vides part of the ar­chi­tec­ture

The in­sti­tu­tion­al foun­da­tions for greater re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion al­ready ex­ist. The Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my (CSME) pro­vides a frame­work for the move­ment of goods, ser­vices, cap­i­tal, and cer­tain cat­e­gories of skilled work­ers. Cari­com has al­so been de­vel­op­ing re­gion­al in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy, trade fa­cil­i­ta­tion, and Rules of Ori­gin.

Rules of Ori­gin de­ter­mine whether a prod­uct qual­i­fies for pref­er­en­tial trade treat­ment. Cus­toms pro­ce­dures af­fect the time and cost of trans­port­ing goods be­tween coun­tries, the move­ment of skilled work­ers af­fects ac­cess to spe­cialised ex­per­tise, and fi­nan­cial and trade reg­u­la­tions af­fect cross-bor­der trans­ac­tions.

In oth­er words, trade pol­i­cy is part of fash­ion in­dus­try pol­i­cy, yet fash­ion is rarely dis­cussed in re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion con­ver­sa­tions with the se­ri­ous­ness af­ford­ed to more es­tab­lished sec­tors. This needs to change.

The miss­ing in­fra­struc­ture

Even with pol­i­cy frame­works, a sup­ply chain can­not func­tion with­out phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture. A fash­ion busi­ness must know where to source fab­ric, which man­u­fac­tur­ers have ca­pac­i­ty, and how quick­ly goods can move be­tween mar­kets.

The Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank has re­peat­ed­ly iden­ti­fied con­nec­tiv­i­ty, trans­port, and lo­gis­tics as ma­jor ob­sta­cles to re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion. If mov­ing tex­tiles be­tween two Caribbean coun­tries is slow, ex­pen­sive, or ad­min­is­tra­tive­ly com­plex, busi­ness­es will keep sourc­ing out­side the re­gion even when re­gion­al sup­pli­ers are avail­able.

The para­dox is that a re­gion­al sup­pli­er may meet a com­pa­ny’s re­quire­ments, and the trans­ac­tion may still be com­mer­cial­ly un­vi­able. There­fore, de­vel­op­ing the sup­ply chain re­quires more than fac­to­ries. It re­quires the ef­fi­cient move­ment of goods and in­for­ma­tion.

The in­vest­ment gap

Build­ing a re­gion­al sup­ply chain al­so re­quires in­vest­ment, as my ex­pe­ri­ence at the Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum 2025 il­lus­trates (JB­DG, 2025). Af­ter a com­pet­i­tive se­lec­tion process, Jes­sel Brizan De­sign Group Ltd. was cho­sen to present a sus­tain­abil­i­ty-fo­cused project to trans­form the re­gion­al fash­ion sup­ply chain. Yet I did not en­counter in­vestors specif­i­cal­ly fo­cused on the cre­ative in­dus­tries, and a cou­ple of meet­ings proved fruit­less. This sug­gests a dis­con­nect be­tween recog­nis­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties in emerg­ing sec­tors and find­ing in­vestors will­ing to fi­nance them.

Clos­ing that gap is es­sen­tial to trans­lat­ing sup­ply chain goals in­to pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty.

The op­por­tu­ni­ty in sus­tain­abil­i­ty

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty is an­oth­er rea­son to re­think the re­gion­al sup­ply chain. The Caribbean can de­vel­op cir­cu­lar fash­ion ca­pa­bil­i­ties along­side con­ven­tion­al pro­duc­tion, in­clud­ing tex­tile col­lec­tion, sort­ing, re­pair, re­sale, up­cy­cling, and re­cy­cling.

UN­ESCO’s Cre­ative Caribbean pro­gramme, which sup­ports fash­ion, iden­ti­fies stronger pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems, glob­al­ly com­pet­i­tive cre­ative goods and ser­vices, en­tre­pre­neur­ial ca­pac­i­ty, and in­no­v­a­tive fi­nanc­ing as key com­po­nents of a stronger Caribbean cre­ative econ­o­my (UN­ESCO, 2023). The goal is not on­ly a more sus­tain­able sup­ply chain, but al­so the cre­ation of new busi­ness­es cen­tred on cir­cu­lar­i­ty.

De­mand must come first

Build­ing fac­to­ries does not au­to­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ate an in­dus­try. Sup­ply must align with de­mand. Man­u­fac­tur­ers need brands will­ing to place or­ders, brands need cus­tomers, and ex­porters need in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket ac­cess. The sup­ply chain strat­e­gy should there­fore be aligned with the over­all mar­ket strat­e­gy.

Tourism could play an im­por­tant role. Ho­tels, air­ports, cruise ter­mi­nals, and des­ti­na­tion re­tail­ers could serve as dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels for in­ter­na­tion­al vis­i­tors, while e-com­merce reach­es de­mand be­yond lo­cal mar­kets.

The da­ta prob­lem

An­oth­er chal­lenge is the lack of re­li­able in­for­ma­tion on the re­gion­al fash­ion sup­ply chain. Key ques­tions in­clude:

• How many man­u­fac­tur­ers op­er­ate in Cari­com?

• What is their pro­duc­tion ca­pac­i­ty?

• Which sup­pli­ers pro­vide tex­tiles and trims?

• What equip­ment do man­u­fac­tur­ers have?

• What are their min­i­mum or­der quan­ti­ties?

• What skills are avail­able in the work­force?

• Where are the lo­gis­tics bot­tle­necks?

• What per­cent­age of fash­ion is im­port­ed, man­u­fac­tured lo­cal­ly, and ex­port­ed?

With­out this in­for­ma­tion, pol­i­cy­mak­ers can­not iden­ti­fy the most press­ing gaps, and busi­ness­es strug­gle to find re­gion­al part­ners. This is part of a wider da­ta chal­lenge fac­ing Caribbean cre­ative in­dus­tries. A re­gion­al fash­ion sup­ply chain strat­e­gy should there­fore be­gin with a sup­ply chain map.

From frag­ments to a sys­tem

The Caribbean should be­gin by map­ping ex­ist­ing busi­ness­es, mea­sur­ing their ca­pac­i­ty, iden­ti­fy­ing gaps, and de­ter­min­ing where re­gion­al spe­cial­i­sa­tion could im­prove ef­fi­cien­cy. In­fra­struc­ture, fi­nanc­ing, and pol­i­cy can then be de­vel­oped to con­nect these ca­pa­bil­i­ties, rather than man­u­fac­tur­ing every­thing lo­cal­ly or du­pli­cat­ing na­tion­al ecosys­tems.

A re­gion­al sup­ply chain will not emerge be­cause gov­ern­ments de­clare it should. It will de­vel­op when busi­ness­es can source, pro­duce, fi­nance, trans­port, and sell across the re­gion at vi­able costs. This re­quires busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments to work to­geth­er and en­tre­pre­neurs to think be­yond their own com­pa­nies.

So, does the Caribbean have a fash­ion sup­ply chain?

Not yet. The in­dus­try is not suf­fi­cient­ly in­te­grat­ed to com­pete in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, but the re­gion has the po­ten­tial to build a uni­fied fash­ion in­dus­try. The Caribbean al­ready has many of the com­po­nents, but it lacks con­nec­tiv­i­ty, scale, in­for­ma­tion, and co­or­di­na­tion.

A fash­ion in­dus­try is not cre­at­ed when a gar­ment is de­signed. It is cre­at­ed when an en­tire sys­tem ex­ists to move that gar­ment and the val­ue it rep­re­sents from idea to cus­tomer.