The Southern African Sustainable Textile and Apparel Cluster (SASTAC) was initiated by players in the cotton industry. Once established, it was supported by the Department of Trade and Industry under their Cluster programme. One of the first requirements identified was the need for an industry-wide strategy – something that would provide common objectives and enable the industry pull in the same direction.
TMG’s primary mandate for the Cluster was strategy development. The scope of the strategy needed to span the entire value chain – from farm all the way to retail. Despite the complexities of such a vast value chain, we were able to craft a strategy that much of the industry not only bought into but had a hand in developing.
A critical component that informed our strategy was a Textile Volume Demand Tool which was developed in partnership with DataSpank. It was designed to identify volume opportunities throughout the value chain and thus inform where to focus. This ‘pull’ approach was fundamentally different to the push strategy that the industry was familiar with.
The demand-driven strategy that was developed has been a key factor in attracting significant reinvestment, by both local and international players, into the South African cotton industry over the past 3 years.
Amongst several other deliverables on the project, we are also very proud to have compiled an in-depth analysis of the cotton textile and apparel industry for 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. The report is entitled “Cotton onto Collaboration”.
We are proud to have assisted an industry that provides many South Africans with jobs, and are excited to see the industry vision realised as players make the strategy their own.