Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2017, Apparel, Textiles, and Merchandising (Education)

Since the 1960s, the United States (U.S.) has become one of the largest apparel importers in the world. Bangladesh plays a significant role as an outsourcing destination in the U.S. apparel industry by supplying a large quantity of low to medium price point products. From the Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA) era, Bangladesh is emerging as a great destination for global fashion brands. The purpose of this research is to examine apparel outsourcing from Bangladesh. This inquiry is guided by the following research questions: 1) How is Philips-Van Heusen (PVH)'s outsourcing performance from Bangladesh compared with Vietnam? 2) How do U.S. Fashion product buyers in PVH view their outsourcing from Bangladesh? 3) How do Bangladeshi fashion product suppliers of PVH view their exporting to the U.S.? and 4) How can this fashion supply chain be improved to make the future U.S.-Bangladesh fashion business sustainable? This research used a sequential mixed methods case study approach on a leading U.S. apparel manufacturing company. By using a supplier evaluation model, it is seen that Bangladesh is in a competitive position compared to Vietnam, the second largest apparel exporter to U.S. The model has five clusters of supplier performance areas and 20 factors under those clusters. For the cost cluster, the lower the cluster score, the better the performance. Out of the five clusters, Bangladesh (0.106) has a greater advantage in the cost cluster than Vietnam (0.281). Bangladesh (0.204) is also more advanced in the quality cluster than Vietnam (0.192). Bangladeshi suppliers performed better than expected in the capacity, negotiability, continuous improvement, and certification factors. In the second phase of the research, interviews were taken from buyers and their suppliers. Buyers have some concerns in the factor areas of geographic location, trade restrictions, country's political situation, warranty policies, and currency exchange situations. Suppliers are not fully efficient in (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Mijeong Noh (Committee Chair) Subjects: Textile Research