Emerald to break into Indian shirt market

by Surekha Galagoda

Emerald International (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka's leading shirt maker will venture into India in the near future in a partnership as there is tremendous scope in India.

Managing Director and CEO A. F. M. Ikram speaking of his future plans for the company said that they want to be a global player and launch new brands.

"We have already laid the foundation by exporting shirts to UK under our brand from 2000. It is a slow but steady progress. Speaking of the Indian market, he said that there is tremendous potential and we are already having talks with a partner. Once we iron out the duty issues we can start exports," he said.

He said that he does not sell anything that he does not like to wear. Therefore, the shirts we sell are value for money. The shirts are well accepted and this has given us a good bargaining power with our fabric manufacturers.

"I do not believe in line extensions as this paves the way to lose focus. Therefore we will do what we know and do it to the best of our ability without compromising on quality which helped us to become the first Sri Lankan shirt to obtain ISO 9001-2000 quality standards, said Ikram.

This certificate was awarded by the Sri Lanka Standards Institution (SLSI). Audits were conducted by them on the whole process ranging from the selection of suppliers of raw material to the distribution of goods to the market including the human resources. SLSI audited safety standards of employees and the hygienic conditions and facilities of the workplace. They were also fully satisfied with the feedback received from the customers, recorded after recent research conducted by a third party.

Under this ISO 9001 - 2000 quality management certificate, Emerald International (Pvt.) Ltd, the master shirt maker in Sri Lanka, has been awarded ISO quality standards certification for the other shirt brands- Focuss, Emerald Leonardo, Class One, Exceed and ED's Array, which are produced at the domestic production plant of Emerald International, in addition to their main brand "Emerald".

We have factories at Maharagama, Panadura and Attidiya. The Maharagama factory caters to the local market producing between 50,000 -70,000 shirts a month while the two factories at Panadura produce about 120,000 shirts a month for the export market. The factory at Attidiya produces knitted garments.

At present we have four retail outlets at Kollupitiya, Wellawatte, Aluthgama and Ratnapura while we are planning to open the fifth outlet in Kandy in addition to having 400 dealers islandwide.

Speaking of the history of the company Ikram said that it was founded by his father M. A. Fatha initially as a textile business in 1942. In the early 1950s he ventured into the manufacturing business initially with knitted innerwear. As he established a sound business relationship with the Japanese textile trade he started to import and distribute Japanese shirts.

Encouraged by the success he started to manufacture the shirts locally using Japanese material. He was one of the few Sri Lankans to identify the power of branding and a separate unit was set up in 1956 to manufacture Emerald shirts.

The restriction laid by the government on imported textiles dealt a heavy blow on Emerald shirts and by the beginning of the 1970s the manufacturing arm of Emerald went dormant.

A new era dawned with the opening of the economy in 1977 paving the way for rapid growth in the economy providing new opportunities for the brand which helped to revive it.

All this helped in rapid growth which resulted in opening a dedicated production plant to manufacture shirts in 1995. Due to the dedication and hard work of the staff we are growing amidst difficulty, said Ikram.