Azerbaijani textile producers are planning to enter the European, in particular the Baltic market, through the recently opened trading house in Latvia, head of the Textile Producers and Exporters Association and CEO at Gilan Textile Park Mehriban Akhundova told Trend.
“Certain work is already underway in this direction,” Akhundova said. “Azerbaijani products are mainly exported to the CIS countries and Turkey, but now some companies are already working to enter European markets.”
“Reduction in the prices for local goods and the creation of design companies are among the priorities for the development of the textile industry in Azerbaijan,” she added.
“In order to guarantee that domestic textile products can seriously compete in the demand market, companies need to raise the level of marketing of the produced goods. Although the quality of local goods is high enough, our products sometimes can not compete with foreign goods due to the lack of appropriate design. Therefore, we need special design studios that would work on the design of local products,” Akhundova said.
“At present textile products that come to Azerbaijani market from abroad (namely Chinese and Pakistani) are made of mixed fabric, which contains a lot of polyester. This applies to both children’s and adults’ clothing, but due to the fact that the prices for these products are very cheap, most of the population prefer these foreign products. In contrast, our local products are produced mainly from very high-quality fabric. If it’s children’s clothes, then this is 100 percent cotton. This high-quality fabric is made from the combed yarn which has the highest quality. This is one of the most expensive types of yarn in the world, but it is environmentally friendly. At the moment the only advantage of imported goods is the very low prices,” Akhundova said.
