MAS Holdings opens manufacturing plant for Pink brand

by Gamini WARUSHAMANA

MAS Holdings, the premier apparel manufacturer and exporter opened its first manufacturing plant for licensed products of Pink brand of the Limited Brands last week. This specialised manufacturing facility is run by Linea Intimates.

The facility is at Pallekele EPZ, Kandy and the opening ceremony was held on Wednesday with the participation of the Vice President of Pink Jonathan Mugler, Associate Vice Presidents Terry Kramer and Mary Ellen.

Limited Brands is an international company operating through reputed brands Victoria's Secret, Pink, Bath & Body Works, La Senza and Henri Bendel. The company operates 2,623 specialty stores in the United States and its brands are sold in more than 800 company-operated and franchised additional locations world-wide.

Chairman, MAS Holdings, Mahesh Amalean in his message said "opening of Linea Intimates marks another significant step in the strong partnership MAS has developed with Pink and Limited Brands. Over the past several years we have seen Pink becoming a significant partner with MAS and are happy to have partnered the brand in its amazing growth in the market place. The licensed apparel program has become an important part of the brand strategy and we at MAS are very excited to be part of this strategic product category. Having a dedicated plant that caters to licensed apparel allows both Pink and MAS to find new and exciting synergies for the brand".

"MAS manufactures of the largest percentage of Pink licensed products. We started this partnership with Pink 10 years ago and today MAS Intimates earns $300m revenue a year. Total revenue of the Pink brand is over $1.5b. The total revenue of MAS Holdings is over $950m", said manager Sustainability and Communication of MAS Intimates Vidura Ralapanawa.

Pink licensed products manufacturing is a special program and the company produces for the exclusive Pink collegiate collection. Under this program Pink supplies its products to specific institutions such as the US army, navy and 59 US universities with the logos of these institutions.

These products are of a high standard and are special products. Products should have Fair Labour Association standard which MAS always maintains. These products are complicated and therefore require different processes. Since the customer is a specific institution the size of the order is small.

Normally an apparel order consists of over 20,000 pieces but in this instance, (if we produce for a university), the order may be around 2,000 pieces.

Therefore, the management of the production is different and it needs a special plant. This program was started in 2007 and today around 90 percent of Pink licensed products are manufactured by us, Ralapanawa said.

Linea Intimates has provided over 1,000 employment opportunities for young people, mostly women. Some are from far away areas such as Ampara. Subodhi Maheshi (21) is from Padiyatalawa, Ampara. She passed the Advanced Level examination in the Arts stream with three credit passes and is now working as a machine operator in Linea Intimates. She is happy with the job and said that she earns over Rs.20,000 a month with free transportation, medical facilities and meals during working hours.