CMAI’s 57th National Garment Fair takes off on July 1

The Clothing Manufacturers Association of India

(CMAI) is celebrating its golden jubilee this year. And to commemorate it, CMAI is organizing India’s largest apparel trade show ‘The 57th National Garment Fair’ from July 1 to 3, 2013 at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, Mumbai. The fair will have well-known names in the business including brands, retailers, wholesalers, agents and distributors. The USP of the last two fairs, the business networking sessions will continue this year as well. The fair will be inaugurated by Zora Chatterjee, Secretary (Textiles).

Commenting on the preparations, Rahul Mehta, President-CMAI says the fair will be spread over around 3.75 lakh square foot and will have 589 stalls displaying over 640 brands. About 35,000 retailers from all across India are expected to visit this B2B event. After a gap of three years, CMAI will be organizing fashion shows during the fair.

During its golden jubilee year, CMAI will undertake various trade and social responsibilities. In May CMAI had organized a ‘Fashion Retail Summit’ in Mumbai as a part of this celebration. It also launched ‘CMAI’s Domestic Apparel Retail Index’ to monitor the health of the garment industry. Presently, the index, with a quarterly indicator, has the involvement of 50 brands and expects to grow to up to 200 brands, who would share their data with CMAI to capture the trends in the Industry.

With ‘Size India’, another upcoming project, CMAI hopes to measure more than three lakh Indians to come up with a standard Indian sizing in the next few years. Also a project named ‘Sparsh’ is being launched to educate its members and expose them to be responsible and socially aware about manufacturing practices. The association has also invested heavily on advertising on a ‘child-free labour’ campaign in last the 12 months.