The Lankan expatriate community should help Sri Lanka at this crucial time by directing attention towards purchasing local brands and supporting the economy to come out from the current crisis, said CEO and founder of the clothing brand GFlock, Ranil Willadarage at a recent media briefing in Colombo.
“My humble appeal to our expatriate community is to help local entrepreneurs build enterprises and bring in the much needed forex to the country. I request them to allocate their clothing budget on Gflock and place orders through the global online store,” Willadarage said.
Most Sri Lankan expatriates buy their clothes from brands such as Zara, Mango, Myer, Uniqlo, H&M, and Shein. Most of these brands are based in Europe and other developed countries in the Asia-Pacific region.
Sri Lankans living in the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe spend an average of $300-$500 as their annual clothing budget on the aforementioned foreign brands, he said, adding that he is ready to offer 51% of the business’s shares to the Sri Lankan public in 2025.
By implementing this model combined with this expected income we will be able to create new jobs across the country and provide them with adequate wages while also contributing to the families of those employees with monthly rice and dry ration packages to further strengthen their quality of life and help overcome poverty.
“By this, we are creating a strong public movement that can save the whole country,” Willadarage said.
“We know that a fashion company is a business that can bring a lot of revenue. If we take Zara, another brand with a fast fashion business model like ours, their annual revenue is between $ 20-25 billion. H&M also has a similar revenue. The business we need to focus on here is the Shein brand. What’s significantly different here is that Shein has zero physical brick and mortar stores and functions solely as an online-based platform.
Founded 14 years ago in Nanjing, China, they now ship to over 220 countries. With highly competitive prices and their online-only B2C model, Shein’s annual revenue is now at a staggering USD 15 billion.
Another specialty here is that with the arrival of the pandemic their annual revenue increased exponentially within the course of three years and the $3.5 billion revenue in 2019 grew to a massive $15.7 billion by 2021.
“So just imagine the potential of this, if a fast fashion business can reach $12 billion annual revenue in three years this is where we should find inspiration. We believe that the Gflock business model can reach the target of USD 5 billion annual revenue within the next five to seven years.
“We can easily compete with Shein because of the fact they follow an ideal called “disposable fast fashion”. At Gflock we have the ability to provide high-quality garments at the same price, Willadarage said, adding that our other competitive advantage is the merit circularity concept of our business model which I have already explained about.
“With these two competitive advantages, I feel we can achieve better accomplishments than Shein. I strongly believe that with the help of Sri Lankan expats in 5-7 years it will be possible to reach an annual income of USD 5 billion. TheGflock business model is set up in a way that can be scaled up as needed, I am confident that my team and I have the specialised knowledge, experience, honesty, drive, determination, and discipline required for that.
“Not only that, if you can be a brand ambassador for this business, promote the goal of saving our country to at least 5 more natives in your country and get them to buy clothes from us. If that can be achieved, we will be able to get rid of the oil and gas queues, the shortage of medicines, and the shortage of food and bring the country back to normalcy sooner than we think,” Willadarage said.
“I also appeal to the brand owners to provide some relief to uplift the living standards of low-income families in these difficult times,” the young entrepreneur said.
“I am positive that with your support this target can be achieved 100% and that we can save our country together. If anybody wants to oppose and say that this cannot be done I am ready to accept the challenge and prove that this is indeed achievable,” he said.
Gflock, is a fast fashion company founded on creativity which designs, produces and sells ready-to-wear garments to a wide array of customers.
While most brands around the world design and produce clothing based on the four main seasons, GFlock releases 40-50 new designs every week, categorised under casual wear, work wear, evening wear, menswear, linen and denim departments.