Textile Industry Scenario of Bangladesh-4

Based on my own impressions, I have categorised different approaches to working with design in Bangladesh into a number of models:

The buyer model
In “The buyer model” the buyer brings materials and designs, often including patterns, to the producer. The producers learn how to make one particular design, but do not learn anything about the market research and trend analysis that lie behind the design nor about the actual act of designing and the design management process.


In the clothing industry it is even often so that apparel assembled in one country has had parts cut to shape in another country. Even “flat goods” such as bed sheets, linen, scarves and handkerchiefs are not necessarily cut to size, hemmed and sewn, in the same country. Here the producer is seen as a machine. The entire design process is made elsewhere.

The Dutch group of designers were Anita Kars, Remco Kemper, Annyta Lollyta, Yvonne Laurysen and Wim Schermer.


As the experience with this way of working seems to be very positive, I suggest that the next phase of this DwB project will include a more thorough look into this method.

The Private Initiative Model
Naturally, there is also private initiative in Bangladesh seeking innovation. Mr. Shamim in Prabartana has collaborated with a British-born textile designer, Jackie Corlett, and an Indian textile design student, Namrata Jshas, in creating the fabric collection “Misty Waters”. Namrata Jshas did it at her last school project. All the three partners are getting 10 % royalties of sales and the fabrics are being promoted both by Jackie Corlett´s company Motif and by Prabartana. An ISO 9001 certificate has been issued. The fabrics are made of different combinations of jute, cotton, silk and metallic threads, being a real challenge for the weavers that took part in the project development. The textile designer worked with a weaver, sharing a loom. Prabartana is eager to export the “Misty Waters Collection”.


Later, Prabartana engaged Namrata Jshas to design a collection of “fusion” clothes for young people. Mr. Shamim sees this as a good investment that was worth the 150 000 Taka he had to pay for 90 days of work. He believes that this collection will last a year.


Prabartana has, on its own initiative, developed handmade paper from the left over threads from the weavers warp. Mr. Shamim is interested in focusing on documentation and on the planning process in future designs projects, and wants to learn to run his business according to the principles of design management.

This model of self-sufficiency is a very good one, - in a sense, this is ideally how the companies should be able to work. The problem, however, is the scarcity of available designers and the need to strengthen the design knowledge on all levels of production. The process has just begun and needs to be continued.

The Jackie Corlett model
The British-born textile designer Jackie Corlett made an introductory course, an in-training programme, called Discovering Design, when she was working for the NGO Heed in the early 90-ies.


Jackie Corlett writes, “…The designers in Bangladesh were becoming ‘Western designers’ by proxy. The majority of their work was simply a matter of interpreting what a buyer wanted into what a craft worker could make, ensuring that everyone was happy. This is still a very important concern in developing this training programme, but it is essential that designers gain confidence in their own innovative abilities. This is a much stronger resource to compete with, in the international market that most of these people are in, than being good ‘interpreters’.”


She has later, writing a Masters Thesis, developed a training program with this long-term aim:

To provide well-designed products for Bangladeshi export markets in order to keep up with the competition and become pro-active in those markets, as well as being able to seek new ones, by recognizing both renewal and innovation in the design process

To source local markets for these products, or adapt versions of them, in order to reduce reliance solely on export trade and to raise the quality and desirability of nationally made goods

To use their design skills to impact problems in the designers’ own local environments and communities so as to raise awareness of the importance of design as an effective resource for problem solving

The course consists of 24 classes. Jackie Corlett is using a lot of her course material in her teaching position at the BIFT. However, as far as I know, this course has never been implemented in the work place, as it was indented. I suggest that Jackie Corlett´s training model should be further investigated on the next phase of this DwB project.

The Training or Service Centre Model
Knowing that the formal design education institutions will use a long time providing the much needed design competence, the idea of training or service centers has developed. The intention is that the producers here can buy short-term services in order to strengthen their design and product development competence. The two existing/planned service centers in Dhaka are described in design education part.

None of the craft businesses that I have talked to, are enthusiastic about the idea of a service center, neither the existing DTC or the prospect of a new one as planned by ECOTA and Tradecraft. This lack of enthusiasm is most likely based on experience. The failure of the government-initiated Common Facility Centers, supposed to create helpful institutions for the handloom industry, is also not forgotten.


The weakness of the training center model is that the craftspeople are not easily included in the training. They rarely take part in this kind of activity. It is better that they are trained in the production process.

Markets
Initially, all the people we talked to in Bangladesh, talked about exports, how important is to export and how they are lacking the necessary design competence to reach the export markets. During the prolonged talks, we realized that there are nuances in this approach. The importance of the local market, with its 130 million potential consumers, became clear. This does not mean, however, that export is of no importance. On the contrary, for the large mills the export market is crucial and even for the craft producers there is a wish for app 30 % of the production to be exported.


The Local Market
The local market in Bangladesh is large, considering the country’s 130 million inhabitants. Even if many are poor and have little money to spend, there is a large and growing middleclass with spending power.

The textile crafts certainly have a local market. Aarong, the largest crafts producer, has done market research showing that the rising middle class is buying clothes and presents at their shops. Also the Experts are well-to-do crafts consumers.

The new jute fabric will probably have a local market in Bangladesh. Some say that the price so far is too high. If the craft producers of the Norad project decide to participate in the NCCB exhibition in the National Museum in October, it will be give some indication of the reception in the local market.

Designers, of whatever level of training, who can work for a home market are undoubtedly at an advantage. The practice in trial and error is certainly of value and a lot less costly than if the market is an overseas one; the exposure to shifting trends allows a designer to develop a sense for the market and, in time, the ability to predict market trends and design with confidence to meet them. Therefore, Bangladeshi (or even Indian) designers are best suited for product development for the local market.

The Regional Market
The regional market must be divided into two:

1. The Asia Pacific Region including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Indonesia as well as the Asian Tigers and the Indian subcontinent


2. The subcontinent, consisting of Pakistan, India and Nepal, has the advantage of being a market with cultural similarities, i.e. in ways of dressing.


Bangladesh can only compete with India when making products that are not made in India or making products of a better quality, some say.

Designing for the subcontinent should be done by designers ingrained in the culture of the area. This is also true for the Asia Pacific Region, meaning that there is a need for special competence about, for instance, Australia or Japan. This market knowledge will currently have to be brought into Bangladesh from other countries.

The International Market

The international trade of textiles is highly competitive. Skill, design and quality are essential. But, equally important is the need to assess national and international demand and integrate it into the production process. NCCB wants Bangladeshi crafts sold in the international markets; the main reason being that the local market cannot absorb all that is produced.


NORAD is planning an international market study as the next step after the jute project. Hopefully, this will be useful not only for the large jute mills, but also for the crafts producers using, or interested in using, jute in their production.

There can be no doubt that very few of the Bangladeshi designers know the international markets. There is a unison cry in Bangladesh saying that they do need help from foreign designers to be able to make products that can be sold internationally. This is even more the case if the products are going to be developed into high-value niche products.

Design education
“Design education does not yet seem to have reached the agenda of either pro-active donor involvement or the multi-nationals. There does not appear to be an awareness of the integral part in a nation’s industrialisation that well trained designers can and should play. “

From Jackie Corlett´s Master thesis
Jackie Corlett also writes that the central key to understanding why design education is important in development situations is the learning the way in which designers think and tackle problems. There are apparently skills that designers possess in analysis and synthesis, which could be used for purposes other than the creation of objects.

A.S.M. Sayem, a M. Sc. student at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, suggests in a paper that there is a need of at least one textile and clothing graduate (speaking of as diverse a group as textile and clothing technologists and engineers, textile chemists, fashion technologists etc.) for the existing 3000 running garment factories and in average five graduates for the existing about 500 different textile mills including spinning, weaving, knitting and dyeing printing mills, totally there is a need of 5500 textile graduates in the textile and clothing industry “at this moment”. Designers not necessarily included.

The Bangladesh College of Textile Technology, a constituent of the University of Dhaka, has successfully graduated 1500 students. Mr. Sayem writes that Ahsanullah University has opened a textile department, but this is so far unknown to me and will have to be researched before the next trip to Bangladesh.

The BGMEA, The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers Export Association, has opened a fashion and technology institute in 2000, the BIFT. Not mentioned by Mr. Sayem is another new institution, the Shanto-Marian University of Creative Technology, having started this year (2003), but with ambitions of becoming the design university of Bangladesh.

All the same, there is a large gap between the needs of the textile and clothing industry and the supply of graduates, be it in textile technology and/or design. It should also be mentioned that no institutions in Bangladesh offer Master’s level education or the opportunity of MPhil or PhD research works in the field.


Higher education

We visited the BGMEA Institute of Fashion and Technology and the Shanto-Marian University of Creative Technology:

The BGMEA Institute of Fashion and Technology, BIFT


The Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers Exports Association, BGMEA, started an institute of fashion and technology in 1999, realizing the need of trained designers and skilled managers in the clothing industry, especially after 2004 when the MFA (the Multifiber Agreement) is ending. Both India and Sri Lanka have invested in academic institutions training people for the readymade garment sector.

The four-year degree programs start out teaching basic skills in designing and making apparels. Then the students can go on to a

B.Sc. in Pattern Cutting & Design

Or a

B.Sc. in Garment Manufacturing Management

The hope is that trained designers will not only enlarge the market for clothing but will also generate demand for a whole range of products manufactured indigenously and industrially in Bangladesh, as the school will turn out designers and merchandisers trained to operate in the global market.

Scottish Sheena Falconer, previously teaching textile design and clothing at the Robert Golden´s University in Aberdeen, was the first principal at BFIT, but did not get her two-year contract renewed in 2002, after having problems with the internal politics in the BGMEA. She is now Pro Vice Chancellor at the even newer Shanto-Mariam University of Creative Technology. The British-born textile designer Jackie Corlett is presently the only design teacher at BIFT.


The students start at the age of 16-18 after having finished “second division in both SSC and HSC”, or A-levels (British system) or high school (American system). There are currently 200 students in this private school. The cost of a degree is approximately 270 000 Taka. This school is equipped with sewing machines, but do not have computers for the students. The standard of the classrooms is very simple.

The BIFT try to find business placements for their students, hoping this will make future employment easier, i.e. one student is working 3 hours 5 days a week at Prabartana. Outside of the BIFT, there seems to be certain pessimism as to the students actually getting jobs. Some claimed that many companies do not want to employ an educated designer, thinking that the designer will soon leave for a new job. They would rather rely on the people with less education who will stay in the job.

The Shanto-Mariam University of Creative Technology

The Shanto-Mariam University of Creative Technology is a new private university, consisting today of Bangladesh Institute of Art, Design and Technology (BIADT) and the Shanto-Mariam Academy of Creative Technology, the first offering education in art, design and computing and the latter planning cultural training centers for children in rural Bangladesh.

The first students started at the BIADT in the beginning of June 2003 for a two-year course. The plans are to develop into the design University of Bangladesh.

Professor Falconer is interested in all kinds of cooperation that would add competence to her faculty and/or faculty to her school. She also wishes to develop a joint program in “Development studies” with a crafts profile, with higher education institutions in Europe.

The facilities were of a higher standard than the BIFT, the students also having access to computers (at least the ones studying computing).

BRAC Univ + DTC

Advisor Syeda Sarwat Abed in Aarong told me that they were discussing starting a designer education at BRAC University. Someone else mentioned that this might be done in collaboration with the DTC, but Ms Abed mentioned prestigious Western institutions as the FIT (Fashion Institute of Technology) in New York City as potential partners.

Training or service Centers
Knowing that the formal design education institutions will use a long time providing the much needed design competence, the idea of training or service centers has developed. The intention is that the producers here can buy short-term services in order to strengthen their design and product development competence.

The Design and Technology Centre, DTC

The DTC started out as a joint project between Dhaka Camber of Commerce and the German Technical Cooperation, the GTZ. Now it is becoming its own legal entity, although financially supported by the GTZ until 2005. By then private enterprises will have to come in as owners.

The German Couple Karin and Franz Bauer are Team Leaders at the DTC. Franz Bauer is an industrial designer having run his own company for twenty years. His specialty is leather design. He claims that the concept of design is relatively unknown in Bangladesh.

The DTC is a facility of design services, selling to potential customers in, primarily, the large industries. Mr. Bauer does not see the crafts sector as potential costumers. Experience has shown that it is not easy to reach the craftspeople, for instance has a textile workshop been postponed because no craftspeople would attend. The craftspeople have no tradition in using a service center for further education.

There is a group of Bangladeshi designers working at the DTC. One of them emphasizes that DTC wishes to establish the industrial design discipline in Bangladesh. The designers also point out that the complexity of a product development is not well known in Bangladesh. The DTC cannot, and will not, offer the fast return that the Bangladeshi companies expect. They are often unwilling to pay for the fieldwork and analysis that is a necessary preparation for the actual design work. Wanting to be an alternative to the brief “designer visits” so well known in Bangladesh, the DTC wishes to supply training as well as designs.

Mr. Bauer wants the DTC to be a platform for cooperation with donors like Norad on design projects. He finds the idea of working with industrial design students intriguing, as his teaching experience from German design schools has taught him how important it is for the students to experience the hard process of changing production processes. Mr. Bauer thinks that the DTC can play an important role implementing research results, i.e. in the field of textile.

Ecota + Traidcraft

Tradecraft, a UK-based fair trade organization, is working on a proposal for a service center, supplying:

Market information

Product development

Males promotion

ECOTA, a fair trade network in Dhaka, has expressed interest in this idea.