This article was written by Leonie Barrie and originally appeared in Just Style.

Just how many factories there are in the Bangladesh garment industry, the size of the workforce, and the number of workers covered by the various initiatives aimed at improving factory safety? The answer, it seems, is that nobody knows for sure and a has now broken out between two groups of academics over their analysis.

At the heart of the debate is a report ‘Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg: Bangladesh’s Forgotten Apparel Workers,’ which was published in December by New York University’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights. It claimed there are thousands more factories in Bangladesh and almost a million more workers producing garments for export than have previously been accounted for.<h/3>

The researchers also concluded that there has been a “woeful lack of progress in actually fixing unsafe factories and that there still is no comprehensive plan to provide the resources to do so.”

But professors from Pennsylvania State University and the University of Colorado, who have studied the findings, say they have identified a series of errors in data collection and analysis – and have in fact come to the opposite conclusion.

“Contrary to Stern’s assertions, more than 70% of garment workers in Bangladesh are covered by the Accord and the Alliance, and if we include workers employed in factories inspected by the ILO-advised National Initiative, the percentage of covered workers reaches 89%,” they say.

Among the key findings of the Stern Center’s report was the identification of 7,000 garment factories in Bangladesh, a massive increase on previous estimates of 4,500 factories. It also assessed the prevalence of indirect sourcing, concluding that 91% of factories in two sub-districts of Dhaka, including informal subcontractors, produced at least partly for export and were unregistered.

It backed its hypothesis with the observation that from 2013 to 2015 while the number of direct exporters remained constant, total apparel export volumes fluctuated substantially. This is because either each direct exporter is able to dramatically increase and decrease its production in response to shifting demand, or the thousands of indirect suppliers enable direct exporters to accommodate significant shifts, it said.

While Stern’s report was based on an analysis of factory data collected from publicly available sources and a field survey, the researchers at Pennsylvania and Colorado say the database included closed factories (including the five factories destroyed in the Rana Plaza building collapse in April 2013), duplicate, and domestic market-oriented factories.

“We estimate that Stern’s database of 7,165 export factories is inflated by at least two thousand factories,” the professors say in their report ‘The Bulk of the Iceberg: A Critique of the Stern Center’s Report on Worker Safety in Bangladesh.’

Other criticisms of the Stern work are that they could not find the majority of the factories in the two sub-districts of Dhaka; the claim there are 5.1m garment workers in Bangladesh is unreliable because it is based on the flawed factory database; unregistered, informal factories employ less than 2% of workers producing garments for export; and “several hundred factories” were not categorised properly, resulting in an underestimate of the number of workers covered by the Accord and Alliance initiatives.

The Pennsylvania State University and University of Colorado analysis instead estimate there are 3.85m workers, and that the Accord and the Alliance initiatives cover 71.4% of workers in the ready-made garments sector.

Add in those under the National Initiative, the ILO-advised government factory inspection programme, and it calculates nearly 3.43m workers are covered – representing 89.1% of all workers.

While the Stern Center academics say they dispute many of the latest assertions about their work, there is one are on which they all agree: that there has been progress in addressing factory safety in Bangladesh, but that much work remains to be done.

 

This article was written by Marc Hasenfuss and originally appeared in BDLive 

SHARES in upmarket retailer Woolworths (Woolies), the darling of the JSE’s consumer sector, were shredded yesterday, with nervous investors fretting over less compelling prospects for the financial year ahead.

The shares finished 7.65% down despite Woolies reporting a 17% increase in revenue to R35.5bn and a 31% gain in headline earnings to 252c a share in interim results to end December. At one point the stock dipped as low as R84.20 — a drop of more than 9%.

One market source suggested there had been a spate of selling by foreign investors.

If the contribution from recent Australian acquisition David Jones was stripped out, then the Woolies top line was up a solid 12.3%.

While the interim numbers largely met expectations, the market is clearly fretting about prospects for the second half.

 

Although Woolies CEO Ian Moir reported robust trading for the first six weeks in the second half, independent analyst Syd Vianello said that there were tough times lying ahead for Woolies in the South African and Australian markets.

In SA, Woolies faced not only the prospect of higher interest rates, but also the possibility of an increase in value-added tax (VAT). “I would not touch a retail share now. I’d rather wait two weeks for the budget until the state of play as regards VAT is clear,” Mr Vianello said.

Directors underlined their confidence in the company’s prospects by hiking the interim payout 38% to 133c/share. Shareholders have been offered a scrip dividend option.

Avior retail analyst Kyle Rollinson suggested the scrip dividend option might have weighed on investor sentiment. “The market does not like scrip dividends, and we saw this with (fashion retailer) Foschini. It can be indicative of a share being expensive.”

In a note to clients, JP Morgan Cazenove analyst Stephen Carrott said the scrip dividend was a complete surprise considering the relatively comfortable gearing of Woolies.

He said Woolies management attributed the scrip alternative to a combination of going into an intensive capital expenditure phase of the business and uncertain economic times on the horizon.

A divisional breakdown showed clothing and general merchandise posting a much improved half, with sales growing 12.5% in SA. Mr Moir reported a good performance from core womenswear and menswear categories and a strong improvement from childrens wear.

The food division pushed sales up 12.1% and operating profit up 18%. Mr Moir said that the company’s supermarket strategy proved successful, adding that Christmas sales had been strong.

In Australia, department store business David Jones increased sales 11% on a 26-week basis, while Country Road saw a 5% increase in operating profit from a 13% gain at top line.

By Jessica Knight.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an increasingly talked about topic in all sectors – particularly in retail. It’s a concept that not only has the potential to impact how the retail sector sells products, but how consumers buy them.

The majority of US retailers strongly believe that IoT will drastically change the way companies do business in the next three years. According to McKinsey Global Analysis Institute research, IoT in the retail environment – where consumers engage in commerce – has the potential to be the 4th largest ‘setting’ – despite significant uncertainty about the rate of adoption by consumers.

Another recent study reveals that consumers appear to be ready with adoption of IoT devices expected to rise quickly with nearly two-thirds of consumers intending to purchase a connected home device by 2019, while ownership of wearable technology is expected to double year-on-year in 2016, with an estimated $2bn being spent on IoT in the next few years.

So what does IoT mean for retail in 2016 and what are the key areas we can expect to see affected?

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Fashion:

ZARA has led the way with a new look at the role RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tags could play in their business model. They started this journey three years ago and by the end of 2016 will have rolled out an end-to-end RFID platform. Key to this was allowing the RFID tags to be embedded in the security tags, which allow them to be reused. These tags offer benefits in in-store workflow, improvements in accuracy and reduction in the time taken to do stock counts – the business case is compelling.

 

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Automated vending:

Companies are deploying fully automated, reduced-line stores. They can be put into retail areas and achieve targeted penetration in a low-cost way, while reducing risk.

 

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Intelligent replenishment:

By allowing for monitoring of stock levels, smart packaging will now allow fridges or pantries to order new goods when stock runs low.

 

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Connected homes and stores:

Connected homes will offer connected health and wellness devices, pantries, appliances and even connected medicine cabinets, while connected stores include technologies such as contactless checkout, scanning, iBeacons, smart mirrors, smart shelves and RFID.

It’s easy to see why IoT is such a hot topic at present. Although there are real challenges involved, such as privacy and security, as well as the necessity for agility and innovation and seamless connectivity, IoT opens doors to many opportunities. The new rule for the future seems to be that whatever can be connected, will be.

The business case for IoT for retailers lies in connecting with their customers in new and relevant ways, as well as driving efficiencies in their supply chains. We are already seeing pilots in South Africa with connected ‘smart’ sensors in store and planogram ‘robots’ to manage consistent instore execution. Local retailers are forging new relationships with smart, innovative partners who will accompany them on their journey.

 

This article originally appeared in Bizcommunity

Author: Craig Page-Lee (@cpl_ignite )

While only a relatively small percentage of South Africa’s population makes purchases via their mobile phones — at this stage — the reality is that this growing segment will eventually present a major challenge for the bricks-and-mortar retail sector, not just here but also in the rest of Africa.

The potential for a growing online retail sector on the continent will surely become a reality in our lifetime. What will this mean for informal traders? What is the power of mobile’s role in helping build the formal retail sector, defined by the ever-increasing number of new bricks-and-mortar retail environments rolling out across Africa, and what are the opportunities for online and informal traders?

Even greater opportunities

While we may think that tech and mobile may only benefit the formal retail sector, the expected growth in online purchases may actually present even greater opportunities for the informal traders, especially as they’re much closer to consumers and are still a cheaper route to market for many products and brands.

With a population of about 51m people¹ and with 89% (>45m people) owning a mobile phone, SA is ranked no. 28 on the “List of Countries by Number of Mobile Phones in Use”². It is further reported that just over 40% of the population owns a smartphone (>21m), close to 60% owns a feature-phone, and that there are over 63m mobile handsets in use, giving SA a mobile penetration of about 130%. With over 15m Internet users in SA³, more than half (57%⁴) of SA’s internet traffic comes from mobile phone users, reportedly. If every one of those smartphone users makes only one m-commerce transaction a year (applying an average transaction value of just R50 per user, per year), that equates to almost R1bn in value for retailers in SA — the potential for m-commerce within SA alone is beyond question.

While it’s easy to say that there is little, or no, threat to bricks-and-mortar retailers as online shopping still only accounts for just over 1% of total retail spend in SA, the SA marketplace has a number of effective and well-supported online retail sites focusing upon fashion, home and lifestyle products (eg superbalist.com), and covering a broad range of everything (egtakealot.com). In Nigeria, we see the likes of jumia.com.ng, a successful online retailer that has become the leader of e-commerce on the continent. All of these have the capacity to present themselves as real challengers to established FMCG and fashion retailers.

Same online approach

Not only that, what with the influx of a multitude of international fashion retailers into SA (all with equally effective digital shopfronts in their respective home-base locations), we will see the same online approach being adopted to support their SA offerings.

Nevertheless, I genuinely believe that the biggest opportunity exists for the informal traders of Africa.

First, consider the number of clients or customers these traders have each day and, secondly, consider the relationships these traders build over time with their customers — especially those that have regular travel journeys and shopping habits.

With a lower cost of data and the rapidly increasing adoption of mobile banking platforms outside the borders of SA, the opportunity exists to convert traditional informal retailing practice into an online-led engagement and retailing behavior. Imagine the scenario where a consumer can message the informal trader or street vendor, place an order and collect on the way home — irrespective of the products being sold?

How it could play out

This is how it could play out:

The trader or street vendor is able to message the “opt-in” groups and advise on fresh stock delivery — even with images. Consumers can place their orders, make payment via the likes of M-Pesa and advise the retailer or street vendor upon expected arrival time. The packages can then be made up for collection by the consumers on their journey through the day. By building a contact list (on mobile database) of opt-in consumers, the retailer or street vendor is one step closer to the development of a loyalty programme and is able to select the best products to be put aside for the loyal, supporting customer.

The limitations for such a simple platform are, however, very similar to high-end m-commerce transactions, those being;

• Mobile-handset screen size, resolution and navigation capability
• Network capability and cost to use — as many consumers are cash-strapped across Africa. The cost of conducting m-commerce impacts directly upon the amount of products and services that may be purchased

More successful

In a way, m-commerce in other parts of Africa could actually become more successful and more broadly used than in SA, considering the ease and frequency of use of online payment gateways. This should apply to feature phones as well.

But are we being too ambitious in our thinking on the power of mobile as a retail channel on the content and, if so, how long before we see greater adoption and ubiquitous engagement in m-commerce across sub-Saharan Africa?

A recent Millward Brown Digital Survey (2015) determined that close to 80% of US marketers confirmed that they would increase spending on mobile as a channel if they could track ROI better. With the ever-increasing number of mobile users in Africa, this presents a huge opportunity for brands to exploit this ubiquitous channel. Going beyond simple mobile measurement in Africa remains a challenge, though, as marketers target people predominantly.

Must for marketers

Understanding consumer behavior, especially within the informal sector, and how the brand conversation flows seamlessly across devices are a must for marketers as they strive to develop a deeper understanding of this broad and complex mix of consumers. Surely formalising ways of capturing data (via mobile platforms) in the informal sector will bring greater value to any brand than ever before?

In closing, and to paraphrase a quote from PayGate CEO, Peter Harvey, as the world of e-commerce grows in Africa, growth will come from young startups and innovation from niche players. I hope that the VC funders and traditional retailers are ready to invest in the next generation of retail on the African continent — through the mobile phone.

Source: Marklives.com

It’s all about digital

When LinkedIn and online job applications first began to gain traction, they were seen as supplements to the traditional paper résumé and in-person interview. Today, the world of recruiting has gone 100-percent digital.

“From the résumé to the search to the interview, we’re moving toward a digital hiring model,” said Bob Myhal, CEO of NextHire. “Résumés will be displaced by constantly evolving representations of individual experiences, skills and aptitudes that exist purely in the digital realm. By 2016, innovative tools that use social media, big data and other technologies to give tremendous insight into individual job seekers will [be] the primary screening method.”

Jon Bischke, CEO of Entelo noted that digital profiles are able to provide far more insight into a candidate, as many recruiters have realized.

“Twenty years ago, the résumé was a piece of paper,” Bischke told Business News Daily. “Now, it’s a collection of all [candidate] data that can be found online, like participation in online communities, conferences and meetups. Recruiters can assess whether a person will fit, and learn if he or she has the right skills for a job.”

For out-of-area candidates and first-round interviews, the phone call is quickly being replaced by the more-high-tech video interview, too.

“More and more employers are leveraging webcam and video interviews to streamline the hiring process,” Myhal said. “We are already seeing a steep uptick in one-way videos where applicants record their interviews for later on-demand viewing. Live, two-way webcam interviews will also experience tremendous growth over the next three to five years.”

Engaging the ‘passive candidate’

More and more of Generation Y will be entering the job market in the coming years, and will soon make up the largest percentage of the workforce. Employers are quickly learning that these workers have different expectations about the hiring process than past generations.

“Raised on technology, [millennials] do not accept many legacy concepts of recruiting and work,” said Marley Dominguez, CEO of Haystack. “To be effective, recruiters are going to need to engage Gen Y candidates in new ways.”

This is especially true of “passive candidates” — individuals who aren’t necessarily seeking a job, but are open to new opportunities, Myhal said. While some employers have no shortage of applicants who reach out as soon as an opportunity is posted, this is no longer the norm for most companies.

“Today it’s far more important for a recruiter to be proactive when finding candidates,” Myhal said.

If you aren’t doing this already, Bischke advised looking for candidates through their social media profiles and anywhere else they have a Web presence, since today’s professionals expect employers to search for them and take their online branding and positioning very seriously.

More-sophisticated data analytics

Using social networks and other digital profiles as candidate search tools has opened up a much wider talent pool for recruiters to draw from, but the time it takes to do that research could end up taking hiring managers away from their most important task: actually hiring.

“It is not efficient to manually sort through profiles and social network data,” Dominguez said. “We expect that the next trend will be not just sourcing social and mobile recruiting data, but actually applying intelligence to summarizing the important information.”

High-quality analytics programs have already been applied to customer data to help businesses make better strategic decisions. Candidate information will increasingly get the “Big Data treatment” so recruiters can quickly and easily locate the best people for the job.

“Cloud-based hiring tools will allow recruiters and hiring managers to easily and affordably find, evaluate and organize top job candidates, while innovative assessment and filtering techniques will help provide a 360-degree holistic view of top applicants,” Myhal said. “Through biometric data, companies like will better predict which candidates are most likely to be a good fit for a position, and which are not.”

Data analytics may even help recruiters discover which passive candidates are better to approach.

“One of the ways Big Data is impacting recruiting is around using social data to identify people who are more likely to be open to new opportunities,” Bischke said. “[Tools can use] people’s online public footprint to help predict when they might be ready to leave an employer and seek a new job.”

While digital tools will never fully replace the human instinct necessary for identifying the right candidates, staying on top of technological trends could be a recruiter’s biggest advantage going forward.

“You need to take advantage of the new tools and resources that allow you to move beyond the résumé,” Myhal said. “This will help ensure you’re finding the righthire and ultimately saving your business time, headaches and cold, hard cash.”

Originally published on Business News Daily