fashion sourcing....

A US Fashion house opened a production facility in Jaipur. Read details here.

I would use the term backward integration for this move if they would've formed it as an alliance with a local supplier and allude to it as fashion sourcing, if they would've planned to start sourcing their work to other vendors in the market. This move will stay under microscope by several others to decide on their moves to the Indian shores for supply.

This is not uncommon. It had happened in case of China. Companies from US, including Levy, had entered the Chinese market in a similar way.

What drove this was the need for quality and entry in Indian markets. This may sound similar to fashion sourcing of cheap labor. However, that's not the driver for the move. The driver for the move is the nature of fragmented Indian supplier market in this space and the lack of quality standards. If a set of local suppliers emerge, who can deliver desired quality clothes, then we would have more such facilities opening up.

Particularly, I like the fact that they are opening a wholesale as well as retail shop in Jaipur to address domestic consumption needs. Given the USD/INR situation, addressing domestic market is an imperative. However, will there be a domestic market if USD goes to 32? That's an interesting thought !

On a sidenote, is this good for trendwhizo's Jaipur real estate? The original hypothesis was from the international airport perspective and possible IT facilities opening up - fashion will be a new dimension - need to check it out in more details.