Catering majorly to French buyers, Market Fit, which has sourcing offices in seven locations around the world, also has buyers from UK, Germany, Holland and Belgium. Thriving on the philosophy of partnerships, all its offices are independent, but yet are an integral part of the group, headed by shareholders and not employees. The Bangladesh office spearheaded by Mohammad Nadim Haider Rouf, Managing Director has benefited from the unique corporate structure and its multi-location setup. In an exclusive interaction with Team Apparel Online, Rouf shares his experience of being a part of Market Fit…
Market Fit’s strategy to look for a partner rather than appointing someone as head of operations has many reasons behind. The most important being that as a partner the person spearheading the operations is an entrepreneur, who has equal stakes in the company, both in gains and losses. “The owners of Market Fit believe that a local partner works harder for his own interest, because a country manager is entitled to his hefty monthly remunerations without any repercussions of how the company is progressing, but if there is a share in the profits, he would fight for every order,” avers Rouf.
The belief that partners work better than country managers was proven right when the buying office first entered the country with a country head, who eventually got involved in illicit practices and tarnished the image of Market Fit. Thereafter Rouf who joined Market Fit as a merchandiser and worked for six years was offered a partnership in the business, based on his performance and commitment. To the advantage of the country partner, Market Fit gives full freedom to its partners to work for their individual goals. Besides running Market Fit they can have other businesses also without compromising the interest of Market Fit. “Maybe in future I would want to open my own manufacturing unit which would have nothing to do with my buying operation,” shares Rouf.
Running the business on his own terms, Rouf is now contemplating on turning Market Fit from a BO (buying office) to a CMTP (cost, make, trims and packing) operation. “Right now we are working like a buying agency, procuring products and taking our commission, but our future plan is to turn our business into CMTP (trading) business. In BO model, it is becoming harder to balance our costs for travelling and other expenditures. We already have started this in Cambodia and it has been well received by our customers,” says Rouf.
Giving more insight on the same, he adds,” Under this system, we will take the order from the customer and give price directly to them – our responsibility will start from raw material procurement, so we will nominate all the vendors thereon. The profit in this model is much higher though the risk is also higher. Initially, customers might be apprehensive, but it is good for them as well because once they place the order, the headache is all ours.”
With Market Fit having sourcing offices in many locations, partners get an advantage of global reach. “For our customers, Market Fit is one entity irrespective in which country the office is. Once a buyer places an order with Market Fit, then we decide which country would be most apt for that product and if any technical difficulty arises, we can swap products from destination A to destination B,” reasons Rouf. He adds, “As soon as I see the product, I analyze if it can be done in Bangladesh or not and give my true feedback to the buyers.
I also give them the option to pass the same to my colleague in a different country where this product can be better made. We have internal competition as well; for example for a basic T-shirt, two of our locations might quote different prices. Also if one office does anything wrong, it affects everybody else.”
Though having independent offices instead of one centralized office, controlling different country operations is alien to many buying organizations, Rouf feels that it actually works to every ones advantage. “With a centralized operation, a major problem is procuring visa every time one has to travel and then language is another barrier; every country has its own culture, language and working systems, you can’t change it, you have to adopt it, so a native office with independent charge can do that much better,” argues Rouf.
In the next stage of expansion the company is planning to open offices in Myanmar, Kenya and Ethiopia as these are emerging manufacturing destinations.
