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The apparel supply chain has evolved since the abolition of the Multi-Fiber Agreement (MFA) in 2008. The transformation allowed many international countries to freely source from countries offering minimum costs for the required products. Retailers have no restrictions as previously quote were allocated to each country to export to markets like the USA and Europe. The international retailers and big brands in the west prefer sources with the best prices and reduced lead time. According to Teodoro & Rodriguez (2020), developing countries have low-cost offerings for buyers.
The global apparel supply chain is complicated, involving many stakeholders and production stages (see figure 1).
Figure 1. Sequential production steps in the apparel supply chain (Saha et al., 2018)
The international retail brands place orders to apparel mills in developing countries. Once the export order confirms, the apparel mill manages and coordinates with all stakeholders at pre-stages. The apparel mill is responsible for coordinating the timely delivery of all required raw materials for production. Concurrently the apparel mills also process sampling for approval from retail designers, marketers, and buying department. The lead times for the whole process are a maximum of 120 days after the order is finalized, and the trend is that lead time is now getting shorter (Mehrjoo & Pasek, 2016). If the same retailer places a repeat order, the apparel mill has only 40 days to replenish. (Abir, 2020). The industry is very competitive due to price, fashion, and lead time. Thus the competition is between the supply chain of one brand versus its competition.
All supply chain members have to create higher value to deliver the best product and services for customers (Mukhtar & Azhar, 2020). The COVID-19 Pandemic disrupted the many industrial supply chains in March 2020; however, with better management and smart lockdowns, economies have restarted slowly in many countries (Ghaffar et al., 2020; Ibarra-Vega, 2020). The apparel chain's uncertainty has increased internally and externally for business enterprises (Golan et al., 2020; Russell et al., 2020; Sen et al., 2020b; Sharma et al., 2020). COVID-19 still poses a danger to the world as new strains are highly infectious (Felter, 2021). To stop the spread, governments are using smart lockdowns in locations with higher infection rates and can cause labor shortages in factories and affect business (Shafi et al., 2020).
At the start of the Pandemic in March 2019, the manufacturing industry's closure caused air quality and the environment to improve drastically worldwide. Further, the Government's closure of public transports to curtail the spread also contributed to environmental improvement, especially in developing countries. However, the developing and under-developing countries faced severe threats of starvation and joblessness due to such measures. The developing countries like Pakistan were unable to completely lockdown and help the needy through fiscal stimulus, which is most of the population (Mamun & Ullah, 2020; Yousaf et al., 2020). The developing countries used smart locks downs to stop the spread and effectively manage to curtail the spread. The apparel supply chain mainly depends on developing countries to satisfy global demands (McMaster et al., 2020). The factories in such countries face all types of uncertainties to result in supply chain disruptions or delays. The apparel supply chain supplies garments based on seasons to the global retail industry. Any interruption or delay created upstream will result in no availability of goods downstream. Thus, the customer will cancel the order or seek higher discounts from the manufacturer in such cases. Consequently, it will increase the supply chain's wastages due to unsold abundance goods at factory or raw material at any supply tiers in the chain. The goods leftover will sell at a lower value at the domestic market, resulting in the factory and economy's loss due to no foreign exchange earning.