Shop-owners check out garments at the trade fair in Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, June 24: The who’s who of Odisha’s garment business are all heading to Exhibition Ground in the city to either display or pick up the best brands and latest designs of attires for men and women at the annual All Odisha Garments Fair.

The fair is the biggest point of trade for all kinds of clothing in the state. All business here revolves around the fact that the youth forms the largest customer base and they love international and national brands.

As many as 80 top brands including Adidas, Blackberrys and Levis have been exhibited at the 12th edition of the annual fair. The fair has turned to be the conglomeration of top garment manufacturers from all over the world that have entered the Odisha market.

“Odia customers used to depend on Calcutta or the other metros to buy branded clothes a decade ago. But then, top brands started dealing with local traders through the Odisha Garments Association. The association is the one stop for every store that offers garments of any branded manufacturer in the state,” said Avinash Chhapolia, joint secretary of the association.

He said that since brands appeared at local stores, there was rapid growth in garment business.

“More and more malls and multi-branded stores selling international labels opened up across Odisha and the last 10 years have been phenomenal in terms of growth of the garment industry,” Avinash said.

“The attitude of the young customers has become completely different from their predecessors and shopping for clothes emerg-ed as a hangout trend. We used to get bulk orders from the big stores,” he added.

However, the last one-and-a-half years saw a sudden decline in the rising interest in shopping of brands, said the association members. The dealers feel it is due to the growing prices and decreasing affordability for the middle class.

“The buying capacity of the middle class in the state has decreased. However, there is still a lot of demand for expensive brands within a smaller social group. So we are opting for the lower-priced designs of branded clothes that our customers can afford,” said a shop owner from Puri.

Both association members and shop owners felt that the trend of online shopping is yet to affect the sale of garments. “It has affected products such as shoes and accessories but people in Odisha prefer to buy clothes from stores where they can physically check the material and fitting,” said Bibhudatta Panigrahi, a senior sales person of a well-known store in Bhubaneswar.

The organisers said that 2.5 lakh pieces of branded clothes were being sold each day at the trade fair.