Children's Wear Report — Supplier Profile — Sample Pages: Sourcing Children's Wear from China

Supplier Profile: Helios Textile & Apparel Co. Ltd

Helios Textile & Apparel Co. Ltd, established in 1997, produces children's garments alongside casual wear for adults and sporting goods. Total sales amounted to US$6 million in 2004, with children's wear accounting for 60 percent, or US$3.6 million; export sales of children's garments grew 20 percent that year to US$2.5 million. The Shanghai-based company is a joint venture between investors from Japan and China, and all of its exports are currently shipped to Japan. Seventy percent of orders are produced on an OEM and ODM basis, with clients including Itochu and Sumikin Bussan, and the company has been licensed by the BBC to produce and market the Teletubbies line of children's wear garments. Running at 50 percent of installed capacity, Helios produces 1.2 million pieces of children's garments a year.

Helios manufactures knitted and woven children's garments: toddlers' designs dominate exports at 50 percent, schoolchildren's garments account for 30 percent and baby clothing the rest, with collections released for spring/summer and autumn/winter, and tops and bottoms each at 40 percent of exports. Prices depend on size and material — T-shirts, short pants and outerwear for babies range from US$2 to US$4 per piece, toddlers' garments from US$2.50 to US$6, and schoolchildren's casual wear and jackets from US$5 up to US$12.50 for an insulated water-resistant jacket — and prices were held stable to the end of 2005. A 12-member R&D team develops more than 2,000 designs a year, using Illustrator and CorelDraw for design and CAD systems for patternmaking and grading, focusing on garment quality, prints and functional details such as detachable sleeves. Fabric conforms to the environmental standards set by JIS and GB of China, and about 5 percent of materials are imported from Japan and South Korea. The 10,000 square metre Changzhou factory in Jiangsu has 500 workers, separate workshops for cutting, sewing, ironing, packing and inspection, and 45 QC staff examining incoming fabric, conducting in-process inspections and checking finished garments, including with needle detectors.

What a Full Profile Adds

The sample shows the profile template at work: company background and markets first, then products with price ranges, then manufacturing and research capability, then outlook. Across all 82 profiles that single template is the point — every manufacturer is examined on the same points, so a buyer can line profiles up and compare export shares, OEM and ODM mix, design capacity, quality systems and price positioning without translating between formats. Details such as a production checklist — lines, research and quality control staff, machinery and processes — turn a profile from a description into an audit summary.

Profiles also connect back to the rest of the report. A supplier's prices can be checked against the product gallery's 157 models and the industry overview's price trends, and its outlook against the supplier survey. When the three agree, a buyer has a supplier worth sampling; when they disagree, the profile has done its other job — showing where to ask harder questions before an order is placed.