Compliance means meeting the set standards. To break it down into more precise points, it means that a company or supplier should act by the industry rules and regulations, standards, practices and government legislation. In one word, any organization’s activities should comply. In Apparel Industry, conforming to recognized standards of production is the most important step to not only provide good quality products but to achieve the goal of any production: gain more profits.
To reach the point of benefiting financially, compliance should be a priority for any production. It can turn into a revenue generator if used in the right way.
Apparel Industry is one of the most multiple sectors of the economy because it requires a tremendous human potential. Human resources need good working conditions for productivity. Good working conditions need a safe environment to make the production fast, reliable, and efficient.
But as easy as this sounds, reaching compliance is nowadays not something that is being practiced everywhere, like it’s supposed to. The main reason of that is chiefly the fact, that being vigilant towards potential risks and practicing compliance by set regulations costs companies money. However, every apparel industry representative company should provide their workers with the most similar working conditions, if they want to achieve desired results.
Additionally, since garment production of the world majorly falls on the shoulders of developing countries, particularly China, Bangladesh and India, importing countries like the USA and EU member states highly value the compliance of those productions.
Primary practices of that mentioned compliance entail:
- No child or forced labour
- Labour without discrimination
- Proper working conditions and safe environment
The importing developed countries have shown concerns regarding those main regulations to ensure compliance with international standards and thus import high-quality finished products.
As a matter of fact, compliance is not only playing the role of “money taker” for the company, as already mentioned. Frankly, it results in turning into a revenue generator, as it is responsible for the company’s overall success and profits.
But apart from that, compliance with regulations and standards also has a few significant benefits. Among them is the fact that risk, regulatory and compliance units gather necessary data, which cuts the need for additional sectors of the company to collect that same data as well. Based on all the required information, successful marketing strategies are planned out, which results in fewer expenses on that side too. So the first step of reducing extra costs to a minimum is completed.
Next, compliance with regulations, while lessening the expenses, also increases the revenues, since it saves on eliminating some other costs of services done by compliance strategies leaving budget for other revenue generating sections.
The best part of your production’s compliance strategy is the fact, which apart from becoming a revenue generator it also increases the effectivity of operations. However, as smoothly as it sounds, we all realize it’s not possible to implement compliance in one night. It requires thorough planning, following the set rules and standards, as well as ensuring safety in the working environment.
For those reasons, a lot of importing companies have appointed external audits to follow their supplier factories’ compliance practices. And slowly, but steadily, Asian countries realized the importance of conforming to internationally set standards and that it increases their revenues.
Countries like Myanmar are now practicing training, CSR advisory, regular external audits for the production compliance all across the country and other strategies that turn them into reliable suppliers.
Long story short, since Apparel industry production, is mainly concentrated in the developing countries, the Western importing countries are ready to invest more in exchange for high-quality products that comply with international standards, which is one of the main revenue generating advantages of compliance.