Esquel Garment Manufacturing VN Co.Ltd (Esquel) was established in 2000 and registered in Binh Duong province, Vietnam. The company is proud to count the likes of Hugo Boss, Lacoste, Ralph Lauren, and Tommy Hilfiger as its key partners. The company produces nearly 50,000 pieces of garments on a daily basis for some of the most iconic brands in the world.
The textile and garment industry is an important sector in Vietnam’s socio-economic development. Vietnam is one of the world’s top five biggest apparel exporters and currently the second largest supplier of textile and apparel to the U.S. market, with over 11 percent of the total US apparel imports coming from Vietnam.
With double-digit annual growth rate over the past decade, there is a fierce competition for talent and skilled labour to fuel this rapid economic expansion. Competition comes not only from within the apparel industry but also from other rapidly growing industries and services. For Esquel, being competitive does not mean relying on low costs and cheap labour. The company believes that having the most productive, stable and happiest workforce is the key to surviving the heated competition for labour.
Esquel’s high productivity enables it to compete against lower cost manufacturers and to reward its people fairly, although good wages are only one part of the solution. Esquel is working to challenge the misperception that the apparel industry is associated with long working hours in sweat shops, by striving to be one of the first apparel manufacturers in Vietnam to have a zero overtime policy in place.
Aiming to compete by quality, service, innovation and technology, Esquel positions itself as a forerunner in the industry by capturing the dividends of the latest technologies such as robotics, nano technology, cloud computing or even artificial intelligence and turning them into competitive advantages. This echoes the company’s strategy of not reacting to changes in the external environment, but rather to anticipate and lead changes and transformation in the industry and in the market.
Cotton shirts manufactured by Esquel are among the ‘greenest’ shirts in the world, as they consume 43% less energy and 57% less water in production than a normal shirt. Esquel prides itself in not simply manufacturing garments, but offering a total shirt solution, from concept to rack by building on a strong foundation of operational excellence, deploying LEAN and leveraging the strength of its vertical supply chain.
As the company is expanding rapidly, it is still keeping the operation agile and responsive. Even with over 5,000 employees, Esquel keeps a flat organisational structure which enables the company to remain in close touch with its people and be ever more attentive to the market, its customers and suppliers.
Esquel believes that the private sector is a major source of employment, wealth creation and innovation in society. Especially, operating in the apparel industry, the company is touching on the lives of people from the base of the pyramid. This is a source of aspiration for the company to “Make a Difference” a difference that transforms a “sweat shop” industry into the one associated with talent, technology and innovation; a difference that changes the livelihood of our people; and a difference that allows the company to be an agent of change to drive social progress.
