GM Fabrics Celebrates 50 Years in Decorative Fabrics Business
New Spacious Location Close to Mumbai International Airport
October 24, 2018
By SIDDHARTH VISHWANATH
MUMBAI, India -- GM Fabrics, a family-owned textile development and manufacturing company that has evolved as a leading supplier to major global retailers, converters, and editors, celebrates 50 years in business.
There are two important happenings during GM Fabrics 50th year, the first being moving to a new, larger location near the airport.
“The earlier office had a 900-square-foot showroom, with a total office space of 15,000 square feet,” Managing Director Gurvinder Singh says. “The new-company-owned office is spread over 35,000 square feet (seven floors), with the showroom occupying two floors of 9,000 square feet ... The company has a new atmosphere and workspace that designers love to work in.”
GM Fabrics showroom in Mumbai.
“Secondly, my wife Ramanjit Kaur has joined the team, along with my two daughters, Nimrat Kaur and Simrat Kaur, as directors, and the team is now further strengthened in terms of manpower in product development, design coordination, and covering American and British markets more frequently,” Singh says.
The daughters graduated in 2017 in London with a bachelor’s degree in textile design (Bucks New University) and a master’s degree in marketing (University of Westminster).
“Over the years, GM Fabrics is regularly widening its manufacturing range of decorative fabrics and has carved a niche position as a leading textile mill in the marketplace, and now velvets are playing an important role in business,” Singh says. “Also, since the beginning of GM Fabrics we have kept our basic marketing principles unchanged, namely to offer a quality product range at very attractive value for money, and this will continue.”
“In terms of prices, we remember that our last price increase to international markets was in the year 2011, and now, effective January 2019, we are seeking a 5 percent price increase,” Singh says.
GM Fabrics has always understood the importance of pricing.
“Though we contained the manufacturing price for long, it has now become impossible to hold to earlier prices since increasing yarn supply prices, the high cost of power, transportation, and increased cost of imported chemicals cannot be absorbed any longer,” Singh says.
During Heimtextil in Frankfurt (Jan. 8-11), GM Fabrics is assembling a collection consisting of a complete range of velvet, a mix of theme-based drapery and upholstery fabrics, embroideries, wide-width sheers, Inherent FR, digital print on natural fibers, and polyesters.
“Our velvet manufacturing plant is one of Asia’s largest, and has had a positive contribution to boost the business by catering to various customers in the domestic market as well as in exports,” Singh says.
The velvet plant with Belgian Van de Wiele weaving, which is highly efficient, has become a very effective performer to deal with the increasing demand for quality jacquard and plain velvets, he noted. The velvet plant has a monthly capacity of 125,000 meters. Capacity utilization is 70 percent and the company expects it to increase in the coming year. Velvets are priced between $9-$12 a meter, and jacquards in the range of $6-$8.
Simrat Kaur of GM Fabrics accepts Best Windowing Covering Blue Drop Award during Mood+Indigo.
Also during its 50th year, GM Plain Fabrics has added wide-width digital printing machine for bed sheeting of 320-centimeter width, knitting machines, embroidery Aari-design (the dot and the alternate dot, the circle, the square, the triangle, and permutations and combinations of these constitute the design), and Loop machines.
“The business in the year 2017 was average, mainly driven by American and British markets, and we expect to improve further in the coming year,” Singh says.
The Gulf markets like the United Arab Emirates remain cold, whereas Saudi Arabia is showing improvement in the last six months, though, at low-price-range collections, he adds.
“We expect that the coming year will give us additional business boost as we have added new capacities in wide-width digital collections and embroidery, apart from existing velvets range,” Singh says.
MUMBAI, India -- GM Fabrics, a family-owned textile development and manufacturing company that has evolved as a leading supplier to major global retailers, converters, and editors, celebrates 50 years in business.
There are two important happenings during GM Fabrics 50th year, the first being moving to a new, larger location near the airport.
“The earlier office had a 900-square-foot showroom, with a total office space of 15,000 square feet,” Managing Director Gurvinder Singh says. “The new-company-owned office is spread over 35,000 square feet (seven floors), with the showroom occupying two floors of 9,000 square feet ... The company has a new atmosphere and workspace that designers love to work in.”
GM Fabrics showroom in Mumbai.
“Secondly, my wife Ramanjit Kaur has joined the team, along with my two daughters, Nimrat Kaur and Simrat Kaur, as directors, and the team is now further strengthened in terms of manpower in product development, design coordination, and covering American and British markets more frequently,” Singh says.
The daughters graduated in 2017 in London with a bachelor’s degree in textile design (Bucks New University) and a master’s degree in marketing (University of Westminster).
“Over the years, GM Fabrics is regularly widening its manufacturing range of decorative fabrics and has carved a niche position as a leading textile mill in the marketplace, and now velvets are playing an important role in business,” Singh says. “Also, since the beginning of GM Fabrics we have kept our basic marketing principles unchanged, namely to offer a quality product range at very attractive value for money, and this will continue.”
“In terms of prices, we remember that our last price increase to international markets was in the year 2011, and now, effective January 2019, we are seeking a 5 percent price increase,” Singh says.
GM Fabrics has always understood the importance of pricing.
“Though we contained the manufacturing price for long, it has now become impossible to hold to earlier prices since increasing yarn supply prices, the high cost of power, transportation, and increased cost of imported chemicals cannot be absorbed any longer,” Singh says.
During Heimtextil in Frankfurt (Jan. 8-11), GM Fabrics is assembling a collection consisting of a complete range of velvet, a mix of theme-based drapery and upholstery fabrics, embroideries, wide-width sheers, Inherent FR, digital print on natural fibers, and polyesters.
“Our velvet manufacturing plant is one of Asia’s largest, and has had a positive contribution to boost the business by catering to various customers in the domestic market as well as in exports,” Singh says.
The velvet plant with Belgian Van de Wiele weaving, which is highly efficient, has become a very effective performer to deal with the increasing demand for quality jacquard and plain velvets, he noted. The velvet plant has a monthly capacity of 125,000 meters. Capacity utilization is 70 percent and the company expects it to increase in the coming year. Velvets are priced between $9-$12 a meter, and jacquards in the range of $6-$8.
Simrat Kaur of GM Fabrics accepts Best Windowing Covering Blue Drop Award during Mood+Indigo.
Also during its 50th year, GM Plain Fabrics has added wide-width digital printing machine for bed sheeting of 320-centimeter width, knitting machines, embroidery Aari-design (the dot and the alternate dot, the circle, the square, the triangle, and permutations and combinations of these constitute the design), and Loop machines.
“The business in the year 2017 was average, mainly driven by American and British markets, and we expect to improve further in the coming year,” Singh says.
The Gulf markets like the United Arab Emirates remain cold, whereas Saudi Arabia is showing improvement in the last six months, though, at low-price-range collections, he adds.
“We expect that the coming year will give us additional business boost as we have added new capacities in wide-width digital collections and embroidery, apart from existing velvets range,” Singh says.
