 "Warm winter hits woollens, heaters biz")
Woolmark, which provides its trademark to woollen garment manufacturers, will for the first time host a fashion show in Ludhiana on Wednesday and Amritsar on Thursday. Earlier, such shows were only held in metropolitan cities, but an unusual slump in sales seems to have forced organisers to hold the event this year at the heart of India's woollen and hosiery industry, sources said.
The company has also convinced its partners to go in for innovative designs as traditional products might not get buyers in this not-so-cold winter. Woolmark has 121 partners, which include manufacturers of shawls, stoles and knitwear spread across Punjab and other north Indian cities.
An unusually warm winter in north and central India has led to an unprecedented slump in sales of woollen garments, hosiery items, heaters and geysers. Saddled with huge unsold inventory, some woollen garment manufacturers are planning to cut down on workdays for their workforce in the next few months as next year's requirement is nearly fulfilled.
The demand for winter garments like jackets, sweaters and thermal wear mainly originates from Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jammu and Kashmir, among other states. However, most buyers gave purchases a miss due to the short duration.
Arun Aggarwal, general secretary, Knitwear and Apparel Manufacturers Association of Ludhiana, said, "According to our rough estimates this financial year, our sales would be down by 30-40 per cent compared to the last financial year."
Aggarwal said end-of-season sales had started much earlier this year. Usually it starts in January. In addition, imports from China were hurting domestic woollen garment makers. The carry-forward stock used to be around 10 per cent every year, but this year, it would be more than 25 per cent.
"There would be a cut in production next year which may result in laying off temporary workers," Aggarwal said. There are around 13,000-15,000 hosiery units in Punjab. Ludhiana is one of the oldest hosiery clusters in the country and is famous for winter garments.
"Business will be down by 20-30 per cent on account of weak sentiments and short winter duration," said Piara Lal Seth, managing director, Apollo Shawls. Amritsar has the lion's share in the Rs 3,000-crore shawls and stoles industry. The rest is captured by Ludhiana, Kullu, Srinagar and other locations.
According to industry data, exports of woollen yarn, garments and hosiery products witnessed a contraction of 28 per cent in April-November 2015 year-on-year. Shawls and stoles exports account for Rs 1,000 crore annually.
As for heaters, last winter saw the sale of two million heaters. The figure has plunged to 1.25 million this year, according to industry estimates. No such figures are available for geysers.
Bajaj, Usha, Crompton Greaves, Orpat and Nova are the major players in the room-heater segment. The companies individually could not be contacted for this story.
An industry executive said sale of room heaters, a dispensable item, was hit by the mild winter in its major markets - Delhi, Punjab, western UP and Rajasthan.
Keshav, who runs a home appliances outlet in Delhi, said last year he sold some 2,500 heaters and blowers compared to a thousand this current season. "And with the minimum temperature now hovering above 10° C, there is little chance of touching last season's sales," he said.
The September-to-December winter season across most parts of North India has been unusually warm this year, with very few extremely cold days.
In fact, temperatures till the middle of January were almost 1-2 degrees above normal. Though, the situation changed dramatically from the middle of January onwards and the cold wave returned, it did not last long.
In the remaining few weeks, there is very little possibility of a strong winter wave returning over the north and central parts of the country.
"As of today, it looks like the intense cold conditions might not return soon," IMD director general L S Rathore had told Business Standard in January.
A consensus statement by the South Asia Climate Outlook Forum in December 2015 had in fact predicted that in the December 2015-to-February 2016 winter season, normal to above normal temperatures were likely to prevail over northernmost parts of South Asia, which also includes states such as Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh etc., while precipitation is expected to remain below normal.
The warm winters resulted in less sowing of wheat crop, the country biggest food grain during the rabi season, by almost 2 million hectare. More than the acreage, experts feel it is the condition of the standing crop which might suffer if temperatures rise suddenly by the end of February and March. However, a gradual increase in temperature might not have a big impact on the condition of standing crop. The exact crop situation would be clear by end of this month; for those selling woollen clothes, a below-par winter has already made life harder.
