Vancl moves part of production to Bangladesh

Online clothes retailer Vancl.com has moved some of its production to Bangladesh, in an effort to reduce costs due to cheaper labor in that country, according to a report in China Business News.

The e-commerce company did a trial with 30,000 shirts in the first half of 2011 via a Nantong, Jiangsu province-based manufacturer, which has a factory in Bangladesh.

A large number of companies have moved their factories to Southeast Asia as material costs and salaries keep rising in China, which is the current center of global manufacturing.

Vancl saw its costs reduced by 5 to 10 percent with the move, benefiting from the lower labor costs in that country, which are about 30 percent lower than in China, said Hu Haishen, who is responsible for Vancl's clothes manufacturing, according to the report.

The company had 140,000 pieces of clothes made in Bangladesh after the first batch, but this only took up "a single-digit proportion of Vancl's total production", Hu was quoted as saying.

The company is also approaching manufacturers in Indonesia and Cambodia for possible cooperation, Hu said. Clothes requiring shorter manufacturing times are still produced in China, he added.

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