Clothesource: help for the global sourcing community
Clothesource combines hands-on clothing industry and retail experience with The Clothesource Knowledge Base - the most comprehensive source of information anywhere about sourcing for the apparel industry.
Clothesource helps make everyone's job in the apparel sourcing world easier and more profitable. Whether you're buying or selling, forming policy or lobbying, studying, commentating, teaching or investing - we'll help you do it faster and more cost-effectively. The publications we sell, the consultancy and training we provide and the resources we give away for free are aimed to help buyers, sellers and observers alike.
Our unique off-the-shelf publications
Provide most of the information you need.
Clothesource Business Profiles provide essential information about manufacturing capabilities for the fifty major supplying countries in each major apparel category.
The Clothesource Handbook is the definitive account of the state of the world's apparel trade.
The Clothesource Guide to Trade Regulations summarises rules about apparel trading in English we can all understand.
The Source is our montly newsletter dedicated to stories that keep you up to date with changes in the global apparel industry, including an archive of articles going back to 2003.
Sourcing Intelligence is our unique database, providing you with all the information you need on the world’s manufacturing countries.
Our consultancy and training services
We use our information to help clients solve problems and improve workers' effectiveness
The Library
We'll be adding to The Library throughout 2008.It carries an ever-growing range of material about sourcing and how to do it better. Most of it's free, and unique to us
Consultancy
Clothesource works with companies at all levels in the apparel business – retailers, garment manufacturers and fabric and fibre manufacturers - to help find the right strategic solutions for their business. Our consultancy projects typically cover
- Helping apparel buyers review or create sourcing strategies,
- Finding new factories for buyers
- Helping suppliers improve their sales.
- Helping industry suppliers evaluate their business basics
Go here for more information about our consultancy on garment sourcing and garment manufacturing
Training
Clothesource offers tailored in-house training programmes for buyers and merchandisers covering trends in global sourcing, strategic decision making, and finding and managing suppliers. Clothesource also trains buyers and merchandisers in partnership with the University of Westminster
Go here for more information on how we train buyers to source clothes better
The unique off-the-shelf publications we sell provide most of the information you need.
Clothesource Business Profiles provide essential information about manufacturing capabilities for the fifty major supplying countries in each major apparel category.
The Clothesource Handbook is the definitive account of the state of the world's apparel trade.
The Clothesource Guide to Trade Regulations summarises rules about apparel trading in English we can all understand.
The Source is our montly newsletter dedicated to stories that keep you up to date with changes in the global apparel industry, including an archive of articles going back to 2003
Sourcing Intelligence is our unique database, providing you with all the information you need on the world’s manufacturing countries.
Go here for a full list of what we sell to make sourcing easier
The Clothesource Guide to Apparel Trade Regulations:
Second Edition , November 2008
The Clothesource Guide to Apparel Trade Regulations has now been updated to include agreements signed by the EU and US to the end of October 2008, and commitments given by President-Elect Obgama during his campaign. No other source summarises so easily how buyers can make the most of the growing number of import duty concessions offered by the EU and US for those sharp enough to spot them. Easier than ever now with The Clothesource Guide to Apparel Trade Regulations
The new Clothesource Sourcing Kit 2009
The new Clothesource Sourcing Kit 2009 offers up-to-date hard data, imaginatively displayed, so buyers andvendors can review their sourcing programmes objectively, quickly and affordably
The Clothesource Sourcing Kit gives apparel brands, retailers, consultants and vendors hard up-to-date data about over 100 different countries’ competitiveness in 35 different product categories. Updated to 2008.
It also shows raw material production and processing capacity, and summarises the import duty and quota restrictions the US and EU impose on each country. The Kit provides macroeconomic information on income and inflation and a summary of the logistic and ethical implications of work in the country
The information for each country and each category is imaginatively displayed, so buyers can review their sourcing programmes objectively, quickly and affordably. And vendors can understand the real competition they’re facing
Clothesource Business Profiles
Clothesource Business Profiles provide the essential information about manufacturing capabilities around the world in each major apparel category.
In each business group, we show where the world’s major apparel importing countries – Japan, the US and EU – buy their garments from, how supplier countries’ share has evolved, how supplier countries’ price competitiveness varies between countries, and how it has changed since quotas were abolished at the end of 2004.
Download the Profiles Brochure
There are separate Business Profiles for
Knitwear,
Hosiery,
Intimate/Swim,
Tailoring,
Tops and Dresses,
Trousers and skirts
Casual Outerwear
To start buying, click here
Free from The Library
We're building up The Library to become the best repository of information on the world of sourcing anywhere. Most of it is free.
Separate sections of resources about:
Sourcing from specific countries