Sourcing

China’s textiles and apparel sector stands at a crossroads of sustainability, competitiveness, and workforce responsibility. With decarbonisation targets, rising labour costs, and export diversification, the industry faces profound transformation. Policies under the 14th Five-Year Plan and “dual carbon” strategy will determine how the sector adapts to shifting global sourcing and compliance landscapes.

At the Intertextile Shanghai Apparel Fabrics - Autumn Edition starting tomorrow, industry players will be seen navigating shifting sourcing strategies, sustainability expectations, and digital transformation. Wilmet Shea, General Manager of Messe Frankfurt (HK) Ltd, explains how themed zones, global exhibitors, and smart tools are helping buyers discover materials, evaluate suppliers, and make sourcing decisions in a changing market.

Munich Fabric Start’s 2025 edition will transform the global textile calendar by combining four leading trade fairs into a single, integrated event. Bringing together industry leaders, cutting-edge innovations, and sustainable sourcing initiatives, the show will provide unparalleled opportunities for collaboration, product discovery, and market insight across every sector of the fashion and textile supply chain.

US fashion companies are restructuring sourcing strategies as 2025 tariffs trigger cost spikes, disrupted supply chains and declining margins. The latest USFIA Benchmarking Study has tracked these shifts, revealing a turbulent sourcing landscape and limited reshoring despite government pressure. Companies are bracing up for sustained uncertainty by expanding supplier networks, scaling back investment, and reassessing risk exposure across global operations.

Egypt's textile industry is rapidly emerging as a global manufacturing hub, driven by competitive labour costs, strategic location, and massive Chinese investment. With exports surging 18% to $2.84 billion in 2024 and government modernisation plans targeting $12 billion by 2031, Egypt is positioning itself as a key alternative to traditional textile centres.

The Circular Fashion Innovation Network (CFIN) has come out with a landmark report detailing two years of industry-led collaboration to accelerate the UK’s transition to a circular fashion ecosystem.

The future of sourcing and circularity in the UK holds promise, contends a UKFT report that explores opportunities for growing domestic fashion manufacturing along with a comprehensive analysis of current sourcing trends as also future prospects for apparel manufacturing.

Are Trump’s tariffs reshaping the luxury fashion world? Here’s an analysis of the rapidly-shifting financial landscape for major brands, and the new cultural pressures arising from social media exposes, all against the backdrop of an increasingly uncertain future, also for fashion that is luxe.

The Big Bro vice-like squeeze of the sweeping tariff hikes will soon be felt far beyond edgy boardrooms and uneasy stock exchanges, and there are sporadic reports of this already starting to take effect. For hundreds of thousands of garment workers—many in the factories across South and Southeast Asia, and Africa to a lesser extent—the arbitrary spike in trade tariffs will be a matter of life and death.

The lesson of the current US tariffs crisis roiling the trade world is this: you cannot keep relying on one country as your export destination. From now on it has to be ‘US Plus One’.