International Conference on Business Research

University of Moratuwa, Moratuwa, Sri Lanka

October 27, 2020, 219-232.

BUSINESS RESEARCH UNIT

FACULTY OF BUSINESS
UNIVERSITY OF MORATUWA

THE EFFECT OF COVID-19 TO APPAREL SECTOR, SRI

LANKA
Hiruni Bolonne
Department of Accounting
University of Sri Jayewardenepura
Colombo, Sri Lanka
E.mail: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

The Covid-19 pandemic has led many countries to implement lockdowns

and social distancing due to an exponential rate at which the virus has
been spreading over and the heightened uncertainty of how bad the
situation could be. The seriousness of the situation caused a disruption to
the consumer habits of shopping as the pandemic heavily influenced to
curtail the spending on nonessential goods which ultimately resulted
with a massive blow to the global fashion market. This study evaluated
the effect of Covid-19 on the apparel industry and using of a framework
of strategies falling over three horizons as respond (short-term), recover
(medium-term) and reimagine (long-term) to deal with the uncertain
situation of Sri Lankan apparel sector facing, to manage its’ survival, to
make it learn & emerge stronger and to prepare & shape itself for the
next normal. The findings of this study emphasize how important it has
been almost all organizations in the apparel sector of Sri Lanka to come
up with mechanisms focusing on short-term, medium-term and long-term
to face the atmosphere created by Covid-19. If the actions in the three
horizons are not managed properly, the apparel sector will face more
detrimental effects which will ultimately lead both the apparel industry
and the economy to collapse as it is the highest export income generator
to the Sri Lankan economy.

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Key Words: Covid-19; A Framework of Respond, Recover &
Reimagine; Apparel Sector; Sri Lanka

1. Introduction

The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) has unprecedentedly resulted in a

global health emergency to the today’s strongly connected and
integrated world while going way beyond its impacts of mortality with
an alarming speed and in bringing economic activity nearly to a
standstill. According to World Bank forecasts, it envisions a 5.2%
contraction in global GDP by 2020 while this being the largest per
capita income contraction since 1870. It has also projected that growth
of advanced economies will be subjected to a shrink of 7% while
emerging and developing markets are forecasted to contract by 2.5%
due to coping with domestic virus outbreaks. Furthermore, the world
bank predicts that view can be pessimistic leading to the extension of
movement restrictions and disruptions to economic activity while
driving the global growth to shrink by almost 8% in 2020 (The World
Bank, 2020). The experiences of the Asian continent reveals that how
worse it has been for apparel manufacturers in forcing them to cease
production or to reduce the capacity as a result of disruptions in the
global supply chain and the emerging health crisis which has led to
imposing of national restrictions on both people and economic activity.
The challenge and the extraordinary of this pandemic are that it has
both the impacts on demand and supply sides of operations.
Considering Tsunami in 2004 and outbreak of dengue, it is the third
time, Sri Lanka is facing a non-terrorist enemy despite the 30-year
terrorist war and Easter Sunday attack in 2019. Being the largest
export income generator, the apparel sector of Sri Lanka has
significantly and negatively impacted by Covid-19 as its’ main customer
base spreading across the European Union (EU) and the United States
of America (USA) where consumers delaying their apparel purchasing
largely due to no urgency to replenish, uncertain economic scenario,
reduction in occasions to hang around and limited product options
along with late and expensive delivery charges. Therefore, the main
purpose of this study is to emphasize how important it has been for Sri
Lankan apparel manufacturers to stay resilient and to be prepared for
the long-lasting impact of Covid-19 pandemic on businesses by finding
out the answers to the following research questions.

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 ● What is the impact of Covid-19 on the global apparel industry?
● What is the impact of Covid-19 on the Sri Lankan apparel
industry?
● What are the strategies adopted by Sri Lankan apparel sector
firms?

2. Literature Review

Indication of the Impact of COVID-19 on the Global and Sri Lankan

Economy

Coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) is known to be a newly discovered

infectious and severe disease caused by coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)
which has not previously been identified in humans. This is known to
be one of the most severe diseases which has been identified leading to
confirmed cases of 10,357,662 with a death number of 508,055 globally
as at 1st July 2020. Identification of the first case in Wuhan, Hubei,
China in December 2019 turned into an ongoing pandemic in just a few
months. While it is impossible to depict the exact economic damage
from the coronavirus pandemic, almost all the economists are sharing a
view that there will be severe negative impacts to the global economy.
China, the second largest world economy known to be the first who
suffered from the pandemic. As per the report of China Enterprise
Confederation (CEC) held on 6th March, a revenue drop was seen over
95% of the 299 large manufacturers which were surveyed in China
(Jurczenko, 2020). In the year 2020, it is expected the global economy
to float with no global growth due to uncertainty lying behind the
Covid-19. As per Tom Rafferty, the main economist for China suggests
that global supply and demand should be back to normal by next year,
but the virus will act as the last factor in determining when each
country will be back to its ordinariness (Jurczenko, 2020).

Moving to Sri Lankan context, the total confirmed cases amounted to

2,054 along with a death number of 11 as at 1st July 2020. With the
identification of the first local case in the second week of March 2020,
the Sri Lankan government introduced various measures of social
distancing such as closure of schools & education centers, culture of
working from home, banning public gathering along with international
arrivals which led to drastically imposing the island wide curfew to
minimize the spread of disease to control the pressure it was giving to
both the Sri Lankan health system and the entire community which led

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to control the country’s fatality rate and recovery rate at 0.54% and
85.1% respectively (Source – Covid-19 Live Situational Analysis
Dashboard of Sri Lanka by Health of Promotion Bureau as at
01.07.2020). It was pointed out that Sri Lanka was one of most
vulnerable middle-income countries to suffer from this pandemic as
the Sri Lankan economy was heavily dependent on foreign trade. As
China being the second largest source market for Sri Lanka, Covid-19 in
China was throwing a significant blow to the Sri Lankan economy.
Furthermore, decreased demands in the USA, UK and European
markets and termination of Sri Lankan employees by Middle East
countries have put tremendous pressure on Sri Lanka’s
macroeconomic stability (Roshana, Kaldeen, & Banu, 2020).

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Apparel Industry

This sudden pandemic has caused economic disruptions while having

spillover implications to almost all industries operating in global
context. This global economic impact is further confirmed with the GDP
estimates of top ten economies (US, China, Japan, Germany, India, UK,
France, Italy, Brazil & Canada) trending downwards (BKR, 2020).
Moving to the fashion industry which significantly contributes to the
global GDP is now experiencing the worst period ever as the top
fashion and apparel markets (USA, Europe, China, Japan, Canada, India
and many other players) have been heavily impacted due to the
outspread of Covid-19 putting the industry into a helpless position of
closing outlets, furloughing employees and cancelling the orders placed
to factories. Being the largest apparel market, USA is facing a serious
condition with the reporting of the highest number of cases and deaths
in global context and as per BCG and other research, 81% of US
consumers believe that recession would soon occupy the pandemic
leading consumers to worry more on personal finance and to plan their
spend on the essentials while limiting on apparel. In addition, the
seriousness of the disease has led most of the fashion brands (adidas,
BESTSELLER, GAP, H&M, LEVI’S, lululemon, NIKE, Patagonia, PVH and
many others) to declare complete store closures in mid-March. As per
Wazir advisors, the combined apparel consumption and apparel
imports of EU and US are expected to reduce approximately by USD
308bn and USD 122bn in 2020 (wazir, 2020). Even if things start
picking in the future, it is very unlikely for the apparel industry to stand
up so quickly as it will take some time for the demand to recover and to

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overcome the significant disruptions caused by the supply side of the
apparel industry.

The Impact of Covid-19 on the Sri Lankan Apparel Industry

Moving to Sri Lanka, it is known to be having a world-class apparel

manufacturing industry operating with giant players such as Brandix,
MAS Holdings and Hirdaramani who have already able to establish
their offices and clothing factories across Asia, Europe and North
America with 60-65% of consumer account from US & Canada and 20-
25% from the consumer account, EU. The downfall of the main
consumer markets due to Covid-19 pandemic has led the industry to
experience approximately $1.5 billion loss in apparel exports during
the 3-month period ended in June (Sukumaran, 2020). It is very
unlikely to think that the damage to cease from that point onwards as
demand contractions have the power to further reduce the country’s
apparel exports by 30-40% even after June in the best-case scenario.
This situation leads to the struggle of the small players to survive while
making it very challenging for large players to stay above the waters
with 70% of costs amounting to salaries and wages.

Strategies taken by Sri Lankan Apparel Industry

Figure 1:COVID-19 and Phases

Figure 1. Evolution of Development
of Covid-19 (New Cases)

In the middle of fighting to save lives and in shaping the economic

recovery, it is the responsibility of each unit in every economy to look
for approaches to mitigate these widespread and sudden disruptions.
Considering the current status of the global apparel market, Sri Lankan
apparel manufacturers need to look for strategies of navigating the
current crisis to a business advantage in a transformed apparel
industry. The global apparel industry will be subjected to three phases
known as short-term, medium-term and long-term considering the
Covid-19 evolution and fashion impact as graphically presented in
Figure 1. Therefore, Sri Lankan apparel industry can apply the
framework, “respond-recover-reimagine” in developing strategies to

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adapt to each of the short-term, medium-term and long-term phases
while exiting the disruption on its feet and being in the game (Alford,
2020).

● Phase 1 – Respond to short-term

Similarly, in any early stage of a disruption, initial step of this phase is

to determine how severe or how fast-moving the coronavirus is. Once
understanding how the pandemic is affecting the Sri Lankan apparel
industry, the players need to immediately initiate responding strategies
such as mitigating disruption, optimizing supply chain and maximizing
resource capacity to survive in this economic turmoil.

● Phase 2 – Recovery in medium-term

At this stage, the economy is beginning to emerge from isolation and

apparel industry will face many challenges due to resuming the efforts
and it will not be a smoothie task to restart the operations. Therefore,
recovery strategies need to be in place to overcome the challenges.

● Phase 3 – Reimagine in long term

The moment the recovery stage is achieved, it will create the apparel
industry itself to look at opportunities for rethinking. Reimagine
strategies cannot be achieved overnight and for that Sri Lankan apparel
industry players need to build a model how they would achieve long
term growth and value to themselves and as well as to the industry.

After reviewing the different literature reviews, below mentioned

framework (Figure 2.) was formed to further analyze and discuss the
effect of Covid-19 to apparel sector of Sri Lanka.

Figure 2. Conceptual Framework

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 3. Methodology

This study investigates the effect of Covid-19 on the global and Sri
Lankan apparel industry and how innovative response strategies
emerged immediately in the short run while medium and long run
strategies need to be reengineered to address the crisis. To understand
the impact of Covid-19 on the global and Sri Lankan apparel industry,
previous literature reviews, newspapers and industry reports have
been taken into consideration. As Sri Lanka has already passed the
short-term phase of Covid-19, had interviews with the apparel giants;
Brandix, MAS Holdings & Hirdaramani to identify the strategies
implemented in the short run. To understand the effect of this
pandemic in medium and long runs, journals such as International
Journal of Surgery, Accounting Forum, Journal of Business Research,
SSRN Electronic Journal, Asian Journal of Multidisciplinary Studies,
Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management and
Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews were
used and utilized the google search engine to locate the latest fashion &
apparel industry publications. The search began using the terms
“Coronavirus Disease”, “Covid-19”, “Global Apparel Market”, “Sri Lanka
Apparel Industry”, “EU and US Apparel”, “Textile and Fashion Industry”
and “Covid-19 Response Strategies”. The publications were browsed
determining their relevance and the focus was to review publications
on global apparel consumer markets and on the weaving of the future
of the apparel industry. The next section will outline the findings
gathered from the conducted reviews.

4. Analysis and Discussion

The Impact on the Global Apparel Industry

Global fashion industry (Apparel & Textile) known to be worth USD

3,000 billion and 2% of the world’s gross domestic production (fashion
united, 2020). Since World War II, Covid-19 has been the biggest
economic contraction and the fashion industry has been vulnerable due
to its discretionary nature (france24, 2020). As per McKinsey analysis,
a much steeper decline of almost 40% occurred in the average market
capitalization of the fashion industry between the period of January to
March 2020. It is estimated that the global fashion industry will be
subjected to a contraction of 27%-30% in 2020 although a positive of
2%-4% could regain in 2021 (McKinsey Global Fashion Index

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estimate). McKinsey analysis approximates that if stores remain closed,
80% of the fashion companies in Europe and North America will be
subjected to financial distress. As per analysis of Fashion Index, it has
been identified that 56% of the global fashion industries are unable to
meet up their cost of capital in 2018 and this may have a high chance of
leading many global fashion industries to bankrupt. Consumer
pessimism is widely spreading, and McKinsey analysis reflects that
75% shoppers in USA and Europe believe that their financial situation
will be badly affected in a couple of months. Flavio Cereda points out
the impact to the global apparel industry as a nightmare where sales go
to zero irrespective of big or small brands (Russon, 2020). Covid-19
pandemic has influenced consumers to shift to a discount mindset
where consumers are looking for special promotions as an important
factor and digital escalations where social distancing and lockdowns
have elevated digital as an urgent priority. The fashion system was also
impacted by Darwinian shakeout where shaking out the weak and
emboldening the strong and accelerating the decline of companies who
were struggling before the pandemic and by innovative imperative
where companies introducing new tools and strategies across the value
chains to future proof the business models (mckinsey, 2020).

The Impact on Sri Lankan Apparel Industry

Currently Sri Lanka apparel industry is directly accommodating

400,000 employees while with a recorded export income of USD 5.6
billion in the last fiscal year (lanka business news, 2020). However, the
pandemic has resulted in mass cancellations of orders which are
currently in production and as well as already manufactured. In
addition, the situation has coupled up with forced discounts and
delayed payments forcing Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers to
working capital issues while leading to delays in new orders due to
supply chain issues. Extended curfew also resulted in additional losses
where shifting the trades to competitors such as Vietnam, Cambodia
and Indonesia who were operational. Moreover, the local apparel
market was also subjected to the value of USD 2.5 billion and where
50% expected turnover in March and April (festival season) was
completely lost (Sequeira, 2020). The Sri Lankan apparel export
market is mainly revolving around few countries such as US and EU
which account for 46% and 40% of exports respectively while the
balance will be accounted by Canada, Australia, China, Japan,

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 Switzerland and Israel (Sequeira, 2020). With the emerging economic
recession, it is expected that the demand for apparel exports will
severely fall. The situation will be worse due to lack of local production
of raw materials and accessories which would negatively affect local
garment exports comparative to other Asian countries. Statistics reflect
that more than 70% of fabric and 70% to 90% of accessories needed
for production are meant to be imports (Sequeira, 2020). Besides,
industry itself is experiencing labour shortage due to many involving
Middle East jobs while 1.5 million of the potential workforce driving
trishaws for their living (Sequeira, 2020). According to Adittiya (2020),
it will be hard for the fashion industry to sell the product once it misses
the season which emphasizes how critical the effect of covid-19 will be
on the Sri Lankan apparel industry.

Strategies taken by Sri Lankan Apparel Industry

Table 1. Respond Strategies & Actions

Source: Author developed

Staying Operational Securing the Liquidity & Cash Position

Implementation of remote working facility Establishing cost controlling mechanisms to
control the timing of payments
Maintaining the plants with health & safety Suspending of dividends
protocols
Introduction of the virtual sampling process Setting up the weekly cashflow forecasting
Increase the frequency of Covid-19 update Calculating the impact to the liquidity by
meetings developing potential scenarios
Introduction of central structure to manage the Tightening and centralizing the payment
functional responses approval rights
Aggressive Cost Reduction Expansion of credit lines
Canceling of marketing campaigns (offline & Assessment of foreign exchanges risks and
online) entering in to hedging strategies
Freeze of recruitments Keeping Supply Chain Operational
Cutting of bonus payments Focus on Tier 1 supplier risk
Reduction of 5 - 60% of employee salaries Activating the alternate sources of supply
Optimizing Top Lines Enhance the visibility of inbound material
Launching health and safety communications Evaluating alternative outbound logistics
and projects to build the community options and secure capacity
Producing of protective equipment (PPE) Conducting global scenario planning

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Short-term – Responding to survive

For Sri Lanka, this phase started in the middle of March in 2020 with
the identification of the first local Covid-19 patient and with the daily
increase of new cases. Similarly, the same period was giving trouble to
main consumer markets; USA & EU with the rapid increase in daily new
cases plus the daily death number. The situation made the demand for
Sri Lankan apparel to shrink with customer cancellations, orders on
hold and tightening the acceptance of orders with the fulfillment of all
prior specified criteria. Apart from that, it was challenging to bring
back operations to normal with the fear factor spread across the
country due to the deadly disease. Apparel manufacturers had to
conduct many experiments on how to face the situation and ultimately
resulting in the opening of plants with a minimum of 50 employees
which were usually accommodating an employee capacity of 1200 –
1500. To defend the crisis and to shift into the recovery phase, many
response strategies and actions were taken, and those depicted in
Table 1.

Medium-term – Recovery

The start of this phase is happening in the moment of the decrease in

new cases and when the health system is capable enough to handle the
situation. However, a vaccine is not yet found, and apparel
manufacturers are always subjected to a risk. This phase is very
challenging as the final consumers look for more and more discounts as
they are financially not strong enough to spend a great deal on fashion.
As a result, there is a necessity of becoming cost effective in every
possible way. Hirdaramani’s launching of digital factory-floor solutions
towards automation (FT, 2020) and the industry accelerating its
investments on data analytics, can be considered as the efforts towards
achieving cost effective goals. In addition, as fashion retailers such as
Fast Retailing, H&M, Inditex and The TJX companies have significantly
and negatively impacted while Aldi, Amazon Carrefour and Wal-Mart
have received moderately positive impact highlights the shifting of
financial wealthiness in placing orders to apparel products (GlobalData,
2020). As Sri Lanka currently operates in this stage, Table 2 will
emphasize the strategies need to be taken to recover back.

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 Table 2. Recovery Strategies

Medium-term
Planning longer strategies to deal with social distancing mainly in factories
and other locations
Accelerate the investment and development on digital transformation
across the business cycle
Enabling artificial intelligence, data-driven decision making to enhance the
efficiency and transparency in the business
Targeting beyond existing clothing retailers to find out financially potential
buyers (other retailers who perform at a moderate positive impact) in
placing orders.
Developing risk exposure index for suppliers and segmentation to minimize
the disruptions
Source: Author developed

Long-term – Reimagine

This is the phase where the pandemic will be managed with either
reliable treatments or a vaccine and where the crisis is heading with
the acceleration of creating a new path to the next normal in the
apparel sector. It can be expected how more consumers will be
interested in smart textiles with wearable techs in changing their
attitudes to be more health conscious. In addition, this phase will look
into re-engineering the supply chain and some of the signals for those
can be Brandix entering a joint venture agreement with Best Pacific
International Holdings in China in manufacturing material while both
Brandix and MAS Holdings moving into nearshoring and onshoring by
establishing plants in Haiti & North Carolina respectively. Table 3
emphasizes the strategies that can be implemented in the long run to
achieve the next normal.
Table 3. Reimagine Strategies

Long-term
Developing products that would satisfy the altered consumer
attitudes.
Moving to input supply from final consumer products.
Looking into on shoring and nearshoring options in terms of
manufacturing.
Rebuilding of sustainability programs for impact and resilience.
Testing of new business models to face the potential black swan
events.

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 Source: Author developed

5. Conclusion and Implications

Nobody has an idea of how long Covid-19 pandemic will last while
creating a panic situation where it shapes the global economy as
pandemonium. The demand and supply chain have been a daily topic
due to the severity of the impact of this disease. Circumstances will not
be beneficial to the Sri Lankan apparel sector as the main consumer
markets; USA and EU facing a great difficulty to establish themselves
due to the daily increase of new cases plus deaths. This study
emphasizes how badly the global fashion industry has affected and as a
result, three phases such as short-term, medium-term and long-term
which apparel sector would face throughout the Covid-19 evolution
and where responding, recovering and reimagining strategies need to
be implemented to overcome the situation, where each phase is
subjected to respectively. Next normal of the apparel sector mainly
depends on how well the industry have addressed all three phases. As
this is a very recently emerged issue, a very limited number of studies
can be found and as this study is addressing particularly the Sri Lankan
apparel sector, this study can be considered as beneficial for apparel
manufacturers to understand how they should act in medium and long
runs to secure themselves and to stand from their feet back again.
Another major lesson to the apparel sector is that the need of treating
health, safety and prosperity as intrinsically collective pursuits than
separate ones. However, gathering of information solely based on the
apparel giants; Brandix, MAS Holdings & Hirdaramani, not considering
other badly affected industries such as tourism and merely capturing
the Sri Lankan apparel manufacturers’ context in a circumstance where
globally apparel manufacturers have affected, can be considered as few
limitations of this study which are opened for further investigations in
the future.

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