Comfort Garments — SME Case Study (UAE)

Comforts Garments is a clothing and fabric manufacturer established in 2003 in the United Arab Emirates and is specialized in the design, sampling, and manufacture of clothing, work-wear, and promotional gift items with a focus on style, functionality, quality, and value. It is headquartered in Ajman, United Arab Emirates. The company has its own sub-brands like Shirts That Hurt and Vent, amongst others. These sub-brands operate online and on the basis of make-to-order, whereas inventory is non-existent for the products and instead, it prepares orders based on quantity. Products include uniforms, customized clothing, printing fabric clothing, and more.

Comfort Garments

To provide high-quality clothing and ensure customer satisfaction.

Vision To be the leading clothing manufacturer and the pioneers of customer satisfaction.

Owner Manager Designing Raw Material Finance Stitching Marketing HR Chief Designer Sr. Manager Sr. Manager Sr. Manager Sr. Manager Sr. Manager Assistant Manager (5) Assistant Manager (2) Assistant Manager (3) Assistant Manager (3) Assistant Manager (2) Assistant Manager (3) Worker Skilled Worker (12) Workers (20) Unskilled Worker (5) Figure 12: Organizational Structure The owner, Yasmina Bourji, has a manager reporting to her directly and he handles all the different sectors within the company. He typically moves along any updates or concerns between the owner and the rest of the employees. The designing department often works hand-in-hand with the owner, as she likes to get involved in the design and stitching processes. Raw materials are handled by a team that has weekly inventory checks to make sure operations are running smoothly and without interruptions. Finance, marketing, and HR are usually reported to the manager and the owner at weekly or monthly meetings.

Leadership Soni Bourji founded the company in 2003 and his daughter, Yasmina, is the current CEO leading the company. Bourji is also the owner of the company’s sub- brand, Vent, and she manages both those businesses quite effectively. The Lebanese entrepreneur expresses that to her, fashion is a form of expression, and it is why she ensures her company provides different designs and all sizes to be inclusive to her consumers.

The company got a lower demand during the start of the pandemic, but it started integrating strategies that focused on the development and expansion of its social media accounts like the sub-brands, Shirt That Hurt and Vent. That helped it increase demand and sales were rising up since its content was being spread to more and more consumers. Below, the table shows the daily average orders Comfort Garments would have before the pandemic in 2019, and then during in 2020 and 2021, as stated by the owner.

Daily Avg. Orders (Per piece) Figure 13: Number of Comfort Garments orders over the years

Comfort Garments provides a wide range of options for customers to choose from. It has high-quality fabric that is customizable to customers’ needs. Through its sub-

brands, like Shirts That Hurt, it provides products like

¡ Hoodies ¡ Printed shirts/sweatshirts/hoodies ¡ Embroidered shirts/sweatshirts/hoodies ¡ Uniforms ¡ Suits and dresses stitching and design

Target Scope Broad (Industry Wide) Narrow (Market Segment) Advantages Low Cost Product Uniqueness Differentiation Strategy Cost Leadership Strategy Focus Strategy (differentiation) Focus Strategy (low Cost) Figure 14: Business Strategies of Comfort Garments The two main strategies that Comfort Garments integrates as part of its business are cost leadership and differentiation.

Cost Leadership – Comfort Garments, like any business, wants to make profit but its main objective is customer satisfaction and loyalty. It provides the audience with high-quality clothing options that are also very affordable in comparison to its competitors.

Differentiation – Comfort Garments understands that customers have different needs and wants, and one of its objectives is to reach as big of an audience as possible.

It does that by providing customers with the option of customization of any clothing piece they would want whether in size, color, or design.

In order to remain competitive and efficient in terms of operations and manufacturing, it is important to integrate operational strategies that are focused on continual development of new products and the maintenance of effective operations. Comfort Garments integrates a

variety of operational strategies that are focused on

Competition – Comfort Garments is no stranger to the industry. It has been operating since 2003 and since then, has gotten plenty of experience and has gotten very familiar with the market’s audience. The company makes sure to focus on the audiences’ needs and unlike other competitors, it wants to truly stick to providing needs regardless of the change in trends or wants or needs. It is always ready to deliver.

Inventory – Comfort Garments operates on a make-to- order basis for most orders. This ensures that it is not producing large amounts of wastes and also in order to provide itself with room for modifications when it comes to customers’ requests.

Information systems – Comfort Garments utilizes information systems that are focused on the maintenance of all important data for the company, like decision support systems to generate forecasts for sales and inventory.

Comfort Garments integrates social media marketing the most. It uses its online presence to its advantage

through the following

What are the benefits your business hope to achieve using CRM?

Improve customer service Improve customer Satisfaction Improve customer retention Increase sales Generate new business Ability to share and distribute data More market products & services Improve market intelligence Manage customer renewals Reduce Cost All of these Information Source: Tech News World Figure 15: Benefits of CRM CRM – Social media helps Comfort Garments maintain effective customer relationship management as it can communicate with its audience through its platforms and keep them updated with new releases, promotions, and more. Research proves that CRM has a lot of benefits.

Promotions and Sales – Comfort Garments appreciates that its customers love promotions and sales. So, every once in a while, Comfort Garments’ sub-brands like Shirts That Hurt, have occasional promotions to encourage consumers to buy clothing. This can be found in the form of “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” or “50% Only Today.” Business/

One of the biggest concerns or challenges that Comfort Garments faces is the high level of competition in the clothing manufacturing industry. There are many other companies that manufacture clothes on a bigger scale and Comfort Garments is considered to be a small company. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the competition becomes intensified as many consumers are not open to trusting new businesses.

Comfort Garments can sustain its competitors by

integrating several different tactics or strategies like

¡ Collaboration with social media influencers and other brands ¡ Releasing on-trend collections ¡ Providing more options and better prices ¡ Starting online trends and buzz

Successful Best Practices

One of the most important factors of a business’ success is its quality. Consumers are often concerned with the quality of a product they are buying as their money is being spent on it. Comfort Garments understands its audience and puts in a lot of effort to providing

consumers with

¡ High-quality fabric and stitching: The company strictly buys safe and original fabric for its manufacturing, and it has a team of expertise for stitching to ensure high-quality clothing.

¡ Affordable pricing: The company follows a cost leadership strategy and instead of charging higher for the quality of the fabric, it focused more on customer satisfaction rather than making more profit.

A common mistake many businesses make is the lack of continual improvements, especially since the market is constantly changing in terms of trends and customer needs and wants. Therefore, when businesses fail to keep up with those changes, their consumers are more likely to lose interest in their products or services and not maintain strong relationships with them. Comfort Garments lets its consumers lead its manufacturing and although that is an opportunity for consumers to get exactly what they want, it could also be a bad thing as it is not participating in the field of trend-setting and it could be beneficial for the company if it were to release its very own collection that could set a trend in the market and create buzz.

Comfort Garments might have a small market share, but it has a very stable business with a large audience of consumers that are loyal to the company. It has recently begun sending out orders to Saudi Arabia, specifically Shirts That Hurt, their sub-brand. Therefore, the chances of expansion through the GCC are very likely. This expansion would enable it to reach a bigger audience not only to increase sales, but to build strong relationships that could be beneficial in the long-term and create a loyal consumer base.

Recommendation/Analysis E-commerce in the GCC has grown rapidly since 2015 E-commerce market size historical growth 2015-2020 ($ billon) E-commerce as % of retail E-commerce market size E-commerce as % of retail KSA UAE Qatar Kuwait Oman Bahrain 10.0 7.5 5.0 2.5 0.0 2020E 9.8 6.7 1.9 1.9 1.8 1.6 5.7 7.5 6.2 1.4 1.6 1.4 1.0 3.6 4.5 1.2 1.8 2.8 3.1 0.8 0.5 1.9 1.8 5.3 8.4 11.2 14.4 17.7 21.6 +32% Figure 16: A chart showing the growth of e-commerce in the GCC According to research, the COVID-19 pandemic is going to encourage growth in e-commerce, and since Comfort Garments communicates with its consumers mostly over social media rather than a physical store, this is a great opportunity. It would be beneficial for Comfort Garments to enhance its CRM and strengthen customer relationships.

Lesson Learned Through this research paper, we learned that Comfort Garments is a very strong company for its size although they are a rather small business. It is able to compete with other big manufacturers in the United Arab Emirates, not to mention, it has a strong online presence. What it could

improve as part of the business is the following

¡ Comfort Garments needs stronger customer relationship management.

¡ The market is predicted to face growth, so Comfort Garments needs to prepare itself to run against the competition.

¡ Continuously innovate and enhance quality to keep customers interested.

In conclusion, it is undeniable that Comfort Garments has been successful since its establishment and rate of sales proves that the strategies that it is integrating have been effective, as well as efficient with the way it operates. However, since the market is predicted to grow, the company will need to enhance its strategies in order to sustain the competitiveness of the market and industry, especially with the power of social media.