GRANTEE SPOTLIGHT INTERVIEW: NATASA SIVEVSKA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR AT TEXTILE TRADE ASSOCIATION — TEXTILE CLUSTER
Established in 2003 with the support of the USAID Macedonia Competitive Activity Project, the Textile Trade Association — Textile Cluster is a non-profit organization, whose primary goal is to help Macedonian textile and garment producers improve their global presence, competitiveness, and boost sales. Can you tell us more about the origins of TTA-TC and why it was started?
“In October 2003, more than 120 companies (covering over 70 percent of domestic employment and 90 percent of the GDP) constituted the Textile Trade Association (TTA). At the beginning of 2004, Textile Trade Association applied to the USAID Macedonia Competitive Activity project to establish a Textile Apparel Cluster.
The Textile Cluster was constituted in October 2004. The Textile Cluster Leadership Council made the first step toward cluster sustainability with the merger of the Textile Trade Association and the Textile Cluster. In December 2005, some 100 textile industry representatives attended a meeting at which the Textile Cluster Leadership Council announced the merger and presented a 2006 work plan. The new organization “Textile Trade Association — Cluster of Textile” (TTA-CT) was established in March 2006 as a self-sustainable and professional trade association for the textile industry.
The main goal of the establishment of the TTA-TC is to support companies in their export activities through four main pillars: 1) internationalization and matchmaking, fair participation, trade missions, and B2B events, 2) human resource development in the field of productivity, quality, social compliance, and access to new markets, 3) advocacy and lobbying with government institutions, and 4) domestic and international projects for improving TTA-TC capacities and offered services for its members.”
Over the past 15 years, TTA-TC was able to maintain its sustainability through coordinating, managing, and implementing, as well as participating in more than 30 national and international projects. What are some of the TTA-TC greatest achievements since its establishment?
“From the very beginning, the projects had great importance for the Textile Cluster. Through them, we ensure the sustainability of the cluster, but more importantly, we release activities in the interest of members and build capacities for the development of additional services intended for the textile sector. In the beginning, we had a small circle of partners, but over time we expanded the network of partnerships, so today we can boast that we had an enviable number of domestic partners, as well as international partners from more than fifteen countries from the region and beyond (Albania, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Turkey, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Latvia, and USA).
The projects supported by USAID, Swiss Import Promotion Programme (SIPPO), GIZ, Invest in North Macedonia, EU IPA INTEREG, ERASMUS+, and other donors were well developed and successfully implemented in key areas important for the sector, such as: implementation of social standards, improvement of productivity and the quality of clothing production, improvement of business practices and export potentials, networking and export promotion, and today very current topics such as design, product development, circular economy, green transition, and digitalization.”
As one of the USAID EDGE grantees, together with your partners from Albania and Serbia, you are implementing the “United Balkan Activities” project which aims to contribute to the sustainable economic growth of the textile industries in Serbia, Albania, and North Macedonia. Specifically, to improve the competitiveness of textile and apparel production companies operating within the clusters. What activities have you implemented so far and what is planned for the upcoming period?
“Our long-standing cooperation with the partners like the Albania Proexport Association, Fashion Apparel Cluster from Serbia, and the USAID EDGE project allowed us to deepen the cooperation and realize activities that are in the interest of our members.
As part of the project, two B2B meetings were held — one online and the other live in Tirana. We are pleased with the fact that there is an opportunity for cooperation between the companies, but also for additional education and exchange of experiences, which we saw through the participation in the visual merchandising and e-commerce trainings organized in Belgrade.
In addition, companies are offered the service of using one of the leading online platforms for fashion forecasting, Worth Global Style Network (WGSN), through which companies working in the area of product development and design will be able to be informed about current and future trends in the fashion and clothing industry. We also paid attention to the importance of good communication between partners and dissemination of the realized activities by creating a link on the website of the FACTS cluster, with which we would like to present the Balkans to the public as a unique opportunity for the production and sale of clothing.
What all three partners will focus on in the coming period is the implementation of social standards and compliance with the requirements of European buyers where these three countries export the most. We now have a satisfactory number of companies that have applied for this cluster’s service, but it will continue to be upgraded and offered to members in order to meet their demands for the introduction of social standards. In the last quarter of the project, the first quarter of 2023, another event will be organized in Macedonia with the participation of companies from all three partner countries, which is expected to strengthen relations and create linkages for joint performance in third markets.”
During October 2022, TTA-TC together with its partners, Proeksport Association from Albania, and Fashion Apparel Cluster from Serbia (FACTS), organized a B2B Fashion and Apparel Live Event in Tirana to sustain competitiveness and initiate cooperation between companies in the Western Balkan region and wider. What were your impressions of this event, and can you highlight some of the key takeaways?
“The first B2B event organized by our partner Proeskport Association from Albania, gave us the chance to introduce the companies to each other and learn more about their needs and expectations. Then the second B2B event that was organized by PROEKSPORT helped establish direct contacts.
The highest potential for cooperation was seen in the production of corporate and workwear for both Albanian and Macedonian companies. For the Serbian companies, the key issue was entering the Albanian market with their own brands. During the event, we had a possibility to present our idea of offering the Western Balkan region as a production destination for German and United Kingdom buyers through constant joint participation at the leading fashion events in those countries.”
The Workforce Assessment, carried out by EDGE in 2020, showed that for certain industries, such as textile and apparel, Western Balkan countries share several common challenges and constraints. What are the major challenges facing the textile manufacturing industry in the Western Balkans today, and how can these companies improve their productivity and competitiveness within the highly competitive market?
“The Western Balkan region is a unique region that can offer many advantages for European buyers. All three countries have similar advantages such as: good and modern equipment (with well-known brands like Brother and Juki), following new trends in development of textile machines and production technologies, increased investments in computer technologies, reliable and fast response, fast sampling, speed to market, low minimums, proximity to European markets (good transportation links), high-quality standards, and high social and corporate compliance.
All three partners are in good relationships with educational institutions, and through the different projects with foreign experts that support them in human resource development. Providing a skilled workforce for apparel production companies is the main constraint to sustainability and growth of this sector, and something that must be addressed in favour of further development of the textile industry. All this is having a direct influence on the improvement of quality and productivity as well as the increment of the competitiveness of the apparel production sector in Albania, Serbia, and North Macedonia.”
According to the latest report by McKinsey & Company, 71 percent of apparel and fashion companies are planning to increase their nearshoring share by 2025. How can this trend affect the companies from the Western Balkans, and how important is the branding for the individual companies and the region as a whole?
“We are already feeling those trends. Our capacities are currently 100% filled with orders from European buyers due to our position close to Europe. Every day we are receiving new requests from European buyers searching for production capacities. What we are identifying now is that companies are seeking to fill their half-empty capacities due to the pandemic, and are accepting under-priced orders. In the following period, companies will need to be well prepared, to develop a strategy for the production of higher-added value products, involving full package production and product development services in favour of keeping existing infrastructure while attracting new potential buyers.
Concerning the branding, our partner FACTS from Serbia is leading in this part and already has experience. I cannot say it is an easy task, but we can use their best practices and can initiate some activities in that field as well. Our target markets for exporting brand products can be first our three countries and therefore the Open Balkan activities and free trade between our countries is a very important issue to be implemented.”
