The European Union wants underwear. And China has got it covered.
Upended by the coronavirus pandemic, the global textile and garment supply chain is shifting its focus back to China ahead of the busy year-end period as overseas customers have turned away from India, which is still battling an out-of-control pandemic.
In Zhaoqing city, in China's manufacturing hub of Guangdong province, an executive at an underwear factory that supplies a high-profile overseas brand said they had no export orders in April or May, resulting in workers being laid off. But in August and last month, as the pandemic continued to spread in Southeast Asia, foreign orders returned, reports the South China Monitoring Post.
"We will have an order for 800,000 sets of underwear next month for the EU market," the executive said on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorised to talk to the media. "We will be very busy next month, and now we are recruiting some workers to fill the order. The brand had not placed orders [with us] for a while."
According to figures from Johns Hopkins University, India has recorded more than 7.3 million coronavirus infections - second most behind the United States - and 112,000 deaths, which is the third most behind the US and Brazil.
As a backbone of the Indian economy, the textile and apparel industry is its largest source of foreign exchange earnings, accounting for about 15 per cent of its export earnings and 2 per cent of the country's gross domestic product.
Gaurav Sharma, a fashion sourcing professional based in Hong Kong, said the lockdown in India has severely affected the delivery of Christmas orders. Normally these orders need to reach buyers in November to be on shelves by December.
"So, what customers are doing is, instead of keeping those deliveries in India, they are moving them to other countries, like China, where fabrics are available and garments can be made quickly," Sharma said. "Or it could be Bangladesh, where fabrics need to be imported, so the production takes longer.
"Everyone I know working in the Indian textile and garment industry is in a defensive mode. They understand the problems on two sides. On one side, customers are placing fewer orders. On the other side, they are not sure about productions. When a lockdown happens, they have to make corrections accordingly, like by downsizing production lines or looking for short-term orders that can be turned around quickly."
With its production capacity having improved from lockdowns earlier this year, China's textile and garment manufacturing industry has shown promising signs of recovery in the second half of the year.
Thanks largely to strong demand for masks amid the pandemic, monthly year-on-year growth of textile exports has been in the double digits since April. And growth of apparel exports also turned positive in August for the first time since March.
