Bangladesh today is the second largest sourcing destination for El Corte Ingles after China, mainly for its viscose and nylon blends in casual sweaters and sweatshirts. Though it started sourcing from Bangladesh from 2005 onwards through its liaison office in India, it was only in the last three years that the order volumes began to grow annually by 20-25 per cent prompting El Corte to set-up its office in the country.
El Corte Ingles (Spanish for ‘The English Cut’), known as one of the single greatest influence on Spanish culture after the Real Madrid Football Club, has constantly embraced expansions and grown from a tailor’s shop in 1935 on one of Madrid’s premier streets to become one of Western Europe’s largest department store. Comprising of 11 associated businesses, 88 El Corte Ingles department stores present in Spain and Portugal, are known to offer a broad variety of goods and services ranging from apparels to real estate. The group also holds nine M&S stores in Spain while its online operations include an online store for UK, Ireland, Netherlands and France. With group sales revenue of US $ 18.5 billion in 2013, accounting for 11 per cent market share in Western Europe and a contribution of about one per cent to the Spanish GDP, sales for its leading apparel label, Sfera generated revenue of US $ 208 million, bringing in 100% profit compared to the year before.
In line with the predictions for winter 2015, El Corte’s winter’15 collection will include multi-fibre blended yarns, mélange and fine gauge jacquard sweaters in colours of the season – browns, burgundy and grey.
Under its labels, Sfera, Elogy, Southern Cotton and Zendra, the retailer offers the widest variety of womenswear, lingerie, menswear and kidswear that reflect the latest trends with a price tag that ranges from Euro 8 to 250. A fashion forward retailer, the stores introduce new collections every month at different price points, putting it in direct competition to the best fashion forward retailers in Europe like Spanish retailer Zara and French retailers Carrefour and Groupe Auchan.
Working with a host of factories in Bangladesh, from small to large manufacturers having hand knits as well as jacquard automats, the retailer is currently focused on sourcing casual sweaters and sweatshirts in viscose and nylon blends from the country. The aggressive financial assistance from Shima Seiki and Stoll to Bangladeshi manufacturers seems to have prodded El Corte to source more of sweaters from the country. Now El Corte is also showing keen interest in increasing the sourcing of denims, jackets and coats – which are all recently developed, niche product categories for the country, mainly because of increasing demands from retailers like Walmart which is already beginning to transform the infrastructure of Bangladeshi factories.
Conscious of its social and environmental responsibilities, El Corte is known to put full trust in its vendors, leaving to them the selection of raw material suppliers, but helps the companies by developing their technical acumen, assisting them in areas such as operator training and quality assurance.
Placing equal emphasis on compliance, El Corte is also an Accord signatory. The retailer has been participating actively in improving the working conditions of its vendors’ factories alongside ensuring fair wages; and contributed to the Rana Plaza fund as well to help the families of the victims of the accident.
