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Strategies & Market Trends : India Coffee House -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mohan Marette who wrote (9443)	11/7/1999 5:20:00 PM
From: Mohan Marette	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12475

CompanyWatch - Ashima Ltd (Plans design hub in UK) ashima-group.com ashima-group.com ashima-group.com Dibeyendu Ganguly AHMEDABAD 7 NOVEMBER (ET) ASHIMA Ltd, the Rs 500-crore Ahmedabad-based textile group, is setting up a second design studio in Manchester, where it will employ European talent to work online with its staff at home. Ashima is already online via partner Cone Mills design studio in New York to the offices of major international customers. Chintan Parikh, Ashima chairman and managing director, said: "It's no longer enough to offer efficient manufacturing facilities. We will offer customers a range of services and help them in developing the fabrics that will go into next year?s fashions." Over the past year, Ashima has upgraded its systems in line with this value-addition strategy. Working with textile system specialists CIS of Germany, it has developed the 'Ashima System', a customised software package that it hopes to offer as a model to other textile companies. The system is linked to that of partner Cone Mills, US, which bought over an eight per cent stake in the company a year back. This includes a link with the Cone design studio in New York, which, in turn, is connected to the systems of Cone?s major customers such as Levi Strauss. Today, the American textile major has moved from sourcing just fabric to sourcing a large portion of its design work from Ashima. Mr Parikh said, "Since it closed down its plant in Salisbury, Cone sources all non-denim fabric from us. So its designers in New York work exclusively on our product line." Ashima's new hi-tech system has cut the lead time for producing finished fabric samples from the earlier two months to just 20 days. And in a complicated operation ? where a single change in the yarn parameter can produce a 100 different finished fabrics - the system allows Ashima to generate an enormous choice of designs, and transmit these to global customers digitally. Mr Parikh said, "We want to use the pool of design talent available in Manchester. The main investment here will be in recruiting people ? the annual salary of a designer is up of œ100,000."