The demand for garments is growing, especially with digitization, social networking sites and apps ensuring that people look their best . This changing consumer preferences in garments have put apparel manufacturers in a spin with an increase in inventory and a need for focused planning, according to the Apparel Manufacturers of India (AMI).

Nikhil Furia, core team member of AMI said that with fashions changing fast, especially the availability of imported apparel brands, the shelf life of designs has reduced, posing a challenge to the domestic garment industry. Today there are many foreign brands in the market and they are upgrading consumer preferences. This ensures growth and the consumer is ready to spend more.

The growth rate in menswear brands is at 7-10 percent, while women's and kidswear constitutes 15-20 percent. The Indian apparel and textile industry is the second largest after agriculture.

Today, with the launch of new designs order bookings happens every quarter, earlier there were only two order bookings – in summer and winter.

At an AMI fair in Kochai, a B2B meet was organised by manufacturers and traders to expose their brands to retailers, multi-brand outlets and store chains ahead of the Onam festival season.

There is a growing presence of retailers at such B2B meets, and the last meet organized in Chennai witnessed the participation of more than 700 retailers, placing orders worth ₹50 crore.

Since most of the apparel manufacturers and traders take their orders in a fragmented manner, the idea is to give them a platform where all the retailers find the best fashion options from Mumbai at one place, one time. The fairs have been organized in Kochi, Chennai and Hyderabad.

AMI intends to take the fair to international destinations such as Sri Lanka and Africa buoyed by the response in B2B meets in South India.