Dressing up Sri Lanka

Wednesday, 23 November 2011 00:47 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Timex Group of Companies MD Arshad Sattar speaking of his company, which is Sri Lanka’s only dress designing manufacturer, stated that Sri Lanka must get into specialising in more products rather than lingerie.

“Sri Lanka is not known for dresses. We have lingerie and pants but not dresses. We supply millions of dresses around the world. We make 800 designs a month and supply dresses on quantities from a low 65 to even 10,000 pieces.” Under the brand name ‘Avirate’ launched last year by Timex, the company already has several stores, of which three are in Sri Lanka and two in India.“We have an e-commerce site which we started four months back to see how as a manufacturer we can connect with the customers.” The company will next move into an advanced e-commerce promotion to extend its presence in the world. Using the new e-fit technology, Timex will offer the possibility of making delivering dresses according to the information customers provide to the website.

“It is a new thing for people in Asia; it is not as popular as it is in UK, Australia and US. The challenge then is to get the locals to trust us on sizes. We will use a new e-fit technology which will scan the body and with a connect device we will assess the size according to our size chart. We are going to go with the device to our stores so we can scan the body on a size chart ranging from zero to 18.”

In April, Timex will launch a special line of clothing done on e-fit ‘made to order’ basis and deliver it to customers in seven days, he said.