How to Start a Garments Accessories Trading Business in Dubai

How to Start a Garments Accessories Trading Business in Dubai

A workshop with four hundred thobes cut and no matching buttons is not running slow. It is stopped — labour standing, a delivery date fixed, and a shortfall worth a few dirhams holding up an order worth thousands. That asymmetry is the whole economics of Garments Accessories Trading. The goods are cheap, the consequence of not having them is expensive, and the supplier who is reliably in stock on a Thursday afternoon wins business that no price list could have won.

It follows that this is an availability business rather than a price business, and almost every decision on the line flows from that. Breadth of stock is the asset: hundreds of references across sizes, shades and gauges, most of them turning slowly, a few of them turning constantly. Dead stock is the corresponding risk, and it is a real one, because a shade that stops being asked for does not become worth less — it becomes worth nothing, while still occupying the drawer a moving line needs.

What a trims counter actually sells

The name is read two ways, and which one you mean decides the business you are in.

The first reading is components: the parts a garment is assembled from. Buttons, zips, hooks, press studs, buckles and eyelets. Sewing thread, overlocking thread and embroidery thread. Elastic, drawcord, bias binding, piping, lace and ribbon. Interlining and fusible facing. Shoulder pads. Woven labels, printed care labels, size tabs, swing tickets, hangers and polybags — the finishing kit that turns a sewn garment into something that can be shipped. None of this is worn by itself; all of it is bought by somebody who is making something.

The second reading is worn accessories: belts, ties, scarves, shawls, gloves, socks, caps, hair accessories, bags carried with an outfit. These are finished goods sold to a person, and in his own sheet they have their own nearby line, CZ 145 — Wholesale Of Clothing Accessories Such As Gloves, Ties And Braces.

Both readings can live under this activity, and plenty of traders do carry some of each. But they are different businesses with different buyers, different order sizes and different risks, and a company that has not decided which one it is tends to end up with a shop that serves neither well. The component trade is a trade counter. The worn-accessory trade is retail or wholesale into retail.

The two columns on the right are real lines on the same sheet — CZ 145 for worn accessories and CZ 143 — Wholesale Of Haberdashery: Needles, Sewing Thread Etc. for notions — and they overlap this one at the edges. Haberdashery in particular is close enough that a counter stocking thread and needles is arguably sitting across both. That overlap is worth naming at the point the activity is chosen, because the cheapest time to get the line right is before the licence exists.

The buyer is a workshop that has already started cutting

Who buys components, and why they buy the way they do, is the most useful thing to understand about this trade.

Tailoring workshops are the backbone of it in the UAE, and his own sheet is full of them — CZ 04 — Arabic Men Wears Tailoring, CZ 05 — Men Tailoring, CZ 06 — Arabic Gowns Tailoring, CZ 07 — Ladies Gowns Tailoring and the embroidery workshops alongside them. Each one is running small production batches against customer orders, carrying almost no component stock of its own, and buying for the job in hand. They order in units and dozens rather than cartons, they order the same things again next week, and they will walk to whoever has it.

Uniform suppliers buy differently. A uniform order is a batch with one logo, one colour and one button, repeated for years as staff join and leave, so the accessory requirement is narrow but long-lived and must be reproducible. A supplier who cannot match a button two years into a contract has created a problem for a client who cannot accept a visible difference.

Small garment factories and sampling units buy to a bill of materials, which means they specify rather than browse — a zip of a stated length, gauge and finish, an interlining of a stated weight. Laundries and dry cleaners buy hangers, covers and tags in volume and care about nothing except price and continuity of supply. Retailers and online sellers buy labels, tickets and packaging to finish their own-label goods.

The route to all of them is physical proximity plus a van. The trade clusters in the old textile districts because a workshop that is stopped will send somebody out rather than wait for a courier, and because buying trims is a tactile act — a shade is matched against a swatch under real light, not off a screen. A delivery round covering the workshop districts on a fixed rhythm is what converts a counter into an account. A catalogue and a phone number sustain the reorder; they rarely win the first order.

The controls sit on the small parts and on somebody else's logo

Most of these goods are unremarkable and attract no particular control. Two classes of them do, and both are easy to walk into.

The first is children's items and anything that can come away in a small part. Buttons, press studs, beads, cords and drawstrings on children's clothing are treated as a product-safety matter rather than a trimming, because the hazard is detachment and the subject is a child. Goods of that kind are assessed against the national standards for the class and are expected to carry the conformity marking that applies — the kind of control is a conformity assessment, and what it requires in a particular case depends on the article and on the market the goods are sold into. Metal fittings that sit against skin attract similar attention over what the metal releases.

The second is branded trim, and this is the sharper exposure on the line. A woven label, a logo button, a printed tag or a branded zip pull carries a mark, and a mark belongs to somebody. Buying a carton of logo labels cheaply is one of the few ways a small accessories trader can import counterfeit goods without intending to: the component is genuinely a component, but what makes it saleable is a name the buyer does not have the rights to use. Enforcement of marks is a customs matter at the border and a commercial one afterwards, and the goods are liable to be stopped and held. The practical rule is that branded trim is bought only on the instruction of the party that owns the mark, with that instruction in writing, and never on the basis that the factory said it was fine.

Beyond those, the ordinary obligations of imported goods apply. Consignments clear on a declaration of what they are and what they are made of, textile components are classified on composition, and a declaration that does not match the carton is a problem at the port rather than in the stockroom. Fibre-content and care labelling that you supply to a maker becomes that maker's statement to a consumer, which is a reason to be accurate about what you sell rather than a reason to be vague.

Premises follow the trade. A counter with drawers and good light for shade matching, a stockroom behind it that will hold many references in small quantities, and somewhere to park a van. What any specific emirate's licensing authority will ask of the premises, and which conformity marks apply to a given article, are confirmed for the actual case — they differ by jurisdiction and by product, and no general answer survives contact with either.

References

1. Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology — national standards and conformity marks, which is the framework components and children's items are assessed against. Ministry of Industry and Advanced Technology
2. Dubai Customs — import declarations, classification by composition, and the stopping of goods that infringe a protected mark. Dubai Customs
3. Ministry of Economy — intellectual property and commercial agency matters, which is where the right to use a mark is settled. Ministry of Economy
4. Federal Tax Authority — VAT and corporate tax enrolment and filing, including on the many low-value counter sales this trade is made of. Federal Tax Authority