Sustainable Story of Dekko and Agami Accessories

Pranta Biswas

Dekko Accessories Ltd. is the country’s first LEED PLATINUM Certified Green garments accessories producing factory. Another sister concern of Dekko Legacy Group is Agami Accessories ltd. also only LEED PLATINUM certified metal garments accessories producing factory in Bangladesh. They produce finest varieties of garments accessories like polyester buttons, woven and printed labels, different types of narrow fabrics, poly bags, board & PVC items, paper printed packaging items, all types of metal garments accessories items with sustainable materials, process & state-of-the-art technology. Their world-class quality has also led most of the major buyers working in Bangladesh to nominate Dekko Accessories Ltd. and Agami Accessories Ltd. as their nominated accessories supplier. They are now one of the pioneers in practicing sustainability in trims and accessories industry.

Recently Team Denim Focus talked with Mohammad Abdur Rouf, Executive Director of Dekko accessories and Agami Accessories Ltd. Mr. Rouf shared the sustainable journey of this globally reputed garments accessories company.

Sustainable story of Dekko accessories and Agami Accessories:

Motivation behind the initiative:

“From the very beginning we had plan for making our factory environment friendly. Our Dekko Legacy Group Chairman Mr. Shahadat Hossain (Kiron) is always very choosy and quality conscious person and he understands the value of people, environment and sustainability. And being a people focused business leader, I also think that people should enjoy their workplace, environment, policy, and procedures of the company.  From these aspects we started to standardize our factories and by working hard over last 4 years now we are here as the first LEED PLATINUM certified Green accessories factory in the World. In the Globe we are one of the top ten LEED platinum certified producing factories. We also have all kinds of other sustainable certifications like GRS, RCR, GOTS, BCI cotton, LCA etc.  Sustainability is the future of any business. Without having sustainability approaches in practice, we can’t sustain longer. We want to represent our factory in the global platform as standard as leading MNC factories so that buyers can realize that Bangladesh is no longer lagging behind in this sector. Branding Bangladesh is our ultimate goal.” – Mohammad Abdur Rouf

What are the sustainability practices specialties?

For maintaining sustainability, we have taken various initiative. We are using 100% recycled raw materials in different product lines to produce sustainable product such as we are importing recycled resin to produce recycled polyester buttons, importing recycled brass to produces metal trims & accessories, using BCI or Organic cotton to produce sustainable ribbon/care labels, using recycled yarns to produce labels & narrow fabrics etc. We have our own plant to recycle leftover or wastage post-consumer poly to make new poly bags. Our manufacturing process is fully eco-friendly with advanced technology. Water usage and chemical usage is very low and environment friendly. For paper based product we are using FSC paper along with vegetable and rice ink. We always focus on innovation and new development not just copying others. We give options to buyers for choosing products rather than their supplied existed requirement.

Future expansion plan: Our next plan is to work on some untouched area of accessories like, zipper, sewing threads, auto cartoon etc. According to requirement and trend we are planning for expansion in our existing setup through digitalization and transformation to the technology driven manufacturing process. And in the long run we have planning to setup factory in global locations.

Observation of the backward linkage Industry during this pandemic situation:

Last year when Pandemic just hit the industry, we were bit frightened. However, based on different perspective, right now this fear is increased on some points and also reduced on another points. Order canceling and holding was the most frequent scenario at the first wave. Local market faced disaster, but global market survived for their alternative selling channels. In this case online selling platforms helped a lot. Previously brick-and-mortar outlets were in the main focus. But during the pandemic buyers emphasized their E-selling platform more. Another perspective is that, due to long lockdown period, buying habit of people have been changed dramatically.  Initially, big brands shifted their selling channel very quickly to attract customers. That’s why consumer started shopping online immediately. And orders started to come again in our country.

For accessories industry, lead time became very shorter that’s why buyers are not taking risk of sourcing accessories from outsides as earlier time. They started sourcing locally, that’s why we are having good business as we have strong product varieties, quality, structured management and service system with perfect matching of compliance requirements.

Message to industry:

“2021 is the year of survival. There will be business, people will purchase 3-4 times more than regular just when the situation will be good, therefore, 2022 onwards survived companies shall be getting good business surely if they have enough preparation”.-  Mohammad Abdur Rouf